Orientifolds, Mirror Symmetry and Superpotentials

We study type IIA string theory compactified on Calabi-Yau fourfolds and heterotic string theory compactified on Calabi-Yau threefolds times a two-torus. We derive the resulting effective theories which have two space-time dimensions and preserve four supercharges. The duality between such vacua is established at the level of the effective theory. For type IIA vacua with non-trivial Ramond-Ramond background fluxes a superpotential is generated. We show that for a specific cho...

The presence of RR and NS three-form fluxes in type IIB string compactification on a Calabi-Yau orientifold gives rise to a nontrivial superpotential W for the dilaton and complex structure moduli. This superpotential is computable in terms of the period integrals of the Calabi-Yau manifold. In this paper, we present explicit examples of both supersymmetric and nonsupersymmetric solutions to the resulting 4d N=1 supersymmetric no-scale supergravity, including some nonsupersym...

This is a short version of hep-th/0406137. We show that the supersymmetry transformations for type II string theories on six-manifolds can be written as differential conditions on a pair of pure spinors, the exponentiated Kahler form e^{iJ} and the holomorphic form Omega. The equations are explicitly symmetric under exchange of the two pure spinors and a choice of even or odd-rank RR field. This is mirror symmetry for manifolds with torsion. Moreover, RR fluxes affect only on...

We study the conditions under which D-brane instantons in Type II orientifold compactifications generate a non-perturbative superpotential. If the instanton is non-invariant under the orientifold action, it carries four instead of the two Goldstone fermions required for superpotential contributions. Unless these are lifted, the instanton can at best generate higher fermionic F-terms of Beasley-Witten type. We analyse two strategies to lift the additional zero modes. First we ...

We review the Kaluza-Klein reduction of Type IIA string theory on Calabi-Yau fourfolds and apply mirror symmetry to the resulting two-dimensional $ \mathcal{N}=(2,2) $ effective theories. In the course of the reduction we focus especially on non-trivial three-form cohomology on these fourfolds and investigate the couplings of the corresponding massless zero-modes. These show a dependence on both complex structure as well as K\"ahler structure deformations and we provide evide...

We present some mathematical aspects of Landau-Ginzburg string vacua in terms of toric geometry. The one-to-one correspondence between toric divisors and some of (-1,1) states in Landau-Ginzburg model is presented for superpotentials of typical types. The Landau-Ginzburg interpretation of non-toric divisors is also presented. Using this interpretation, we propose a method to solve the so-called "twisted sector problem" by orbifold construction. Moreover,this construction show...

We present a symplectic rearrangement of the effective four-dimensional non-geometric scalar potential resulting from type IIB superstring compactification on Calabi Yau orientifolds. The strategy has two main steps. In the first step, we rewrite the four dimensional scalar potential utilizing some interesting flux combinations which we call new generalized flux orbits. After invoking a couple of non-trivial symplectic relations, in the second step, we further rearrange all t...

We study the boundary states of D-branes wrapped around supersymmetric cycles in a general Calabi-Yau manifold. In particular, we show how the geometric data on the cycles are encoded in the boundary states. As an application, we analyze how the mirror symmetry transforms D-branes, and we verify that it is consistent with the conjectured periodicity and the monodromy of the Ramond-Ramond field configuration on a Calabi-Yau manifold. This also enables us to study open string w...

We consider a class of special Lagrangian subspaces of Calabi-Yau manifolds and identify their mirrors, using the recent derivation of mirror symmetry, as certain holomorphic varieties of the mirror geometry. This transforms the counting of holomorphic disc instantons ending on the Lagrangian submanifold to the classical Abel-Jacobi map on the mirror. We recover some results already anticipated as well as obtain some highly non-trivial new predictions.

We briefly report on some recent progress in the computation of B-brane superpotentials for Type II strings compactified on Calabi-Yau manifolds, obtained by using a parametrization of tubular neighborhoods of complex submanifolds, also known as local spaces. In particular, we propose a closed expression for the superpotential of a brane on a genus-g curve in a Calabi-Yau threefold in the case in which there exists a holomorphic projection from the local space around the curv...