Anti-de Sitter Particles and Manifest (Super)Isometries

Starting from the classical action for a spin-zero particle in a D-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime, we recover the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound by quantization. For D=4, 5, 7 and using an Sl(2;K) spinor notation for K=R,C,H, we find a bitwistor form of the action for which the AdS isometry group is linearly realized, although only for zero mass when D=4, 7 in agreement with previous constructions. For zero mass and D=4 the conformal isometry group is linearly realized. We extend these results to the superparticle in the maximally supersymmetric "AdS×S" string or M-theory vacua, showing that quantization yields a 128+128 component supermultiplet. We also extend them to the null string.