New deformations of N = 4 and N = 8 supersymmetric mechanics.

This is a review of two different types of the deformed N = 4 and N = 8 supersymmetric mechanics. The first type is associated with the world-line realizations of the supergroups SU(2|1) (four supercharges), as well as of SU(2|2) and SU(4|1) (eight supercharges). The second type is the quaternion- Kähler (QK) deformation of the hyper-Kähler (HK) N = 4 mechanics models. The basic distinguishing feature of the QK models is a local N = 4 supersymmetry realized in d = 1 harmonic superspace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]