The Osp(8|4) singleton action from the supermembrane

Our goal is to study the supermembrane on an $AdS_4 \times \cal M_7$ background, where $\cal M_7$ is a 7--dimensional Einstein manifold with $N$ Killing spinors. This is a direct way to derive the $Osp(N|4)$ singleton field theory with all the additional properties inherited from the geometry of the internal manifold. As a first example we consider the maximally supersymmetric $Osp(8|4)$ singleton corresponding to the choice $\cal M_7 = S^7$. We find the explicit form of the action of the membrane coupled to this background geometry and show its invariance under non--linearly realised superconformal transformations. To do this we introduce a supergroup generalisation of the solvable Lie algebra parametrisation of non--compact coset spaces. We also derive the action of quantum fluctuations around the classical solitonic configuration, showing that this is precisely the singleton action. We find that the singleton i is simply realised as a free field theory living on flat Minkowski space.