Eleven Dimensional Supergravity and Chern-Simons Theory

In stark contrast with the interactions of the standard model, general relativity does not correspond to an off-shell invariant gauge theory (in the fiber bundle sense). Instead, it has been conjectured that supergravity in d = 11 could correspond to a gauge theory, but only if its 3-form field could be decomposed in such a way that the full lagrangian is rendered as off-shell invariant under some supergroup. In the present article, we will show that instead of being a gauge theory itself, eleven dimensional supergravity seems to correspond to a small sector of an on-shell invariant Chern-Simons gauge theory defined in d = 11. Deciding this issue has further consequences in the context of M The- ory. In fact, if supergravity does correspond to a particular case of Chern-Simons theory, this fact would point a Chern-Simons lagrangian as a new limit of M Theory.