Journal Article

The type IIA flux potential, 4-forms and Freed-Witten anomalies

Herráez, Alvaro, Ibáñez, Luis E., Zoccarato, Gianluca, Marchesano, Fernando

2018

Overview

A bstract We compute the full classical 4d scalar potential of type IIA Calabi-Yau orientifolds in the presence of fluxes and D6-branes. We show that it can be written as a bilinear form V = Z AB ρ A ρ B , where the ρ A are in one-to-one correspondence with the 4-form fluxes of the 4d effective theory. The ρ A only depend on the internal fluxes, the axions and the topological data of the compactification, and are fully determined by the Freed-Witten anomalies of branes that appear as 4d string defects. The quadratic form Z AB only depends on the saxionic partners of these axions. In general, the ρ A can be seen as the basic invariants under the discrete shift symmetries of the 4d effective theory, and therefore the building blocks of any flux-dependent quantity. All these polynomials may be obtained by derivation from one of them, associated to a universal 4-form. The standard N = 1 supergravity flux superpotential is uniquely determined from this master polynomial , and vice versa.

• Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg,Springer Nature B.V,SpringerOpen
• Subject: Anomalies / Anomalies in Field and String Theories / Branes / Classical and Quantum Gravitation / D-branes / Discrete Symmetries / Elementary Particles / Flux compactifications / Fluxes / High energy physics / Physics / Physics and Astronomy / Polynomials / Quadratic forms / Quantum Field Theories / Quantum Field Theory / Quantum Physics / Regular Article - Theoretical Physics / Relativity Theory / String Theory / Supergravity