Static domain walls in N = 1 supergravity

Abstract

We study supersymmetric domain walls in N = 1 supergravity theories, including those with modular-invariant superpotentials arising in superstring compactifications. Such domain walls are shown to saturate the Bogomol'nyi bound of wall energy per unit area. We find static and reflection asymmetric domain wall solutions of the self-duality equations for the metric and the matter fields. Such solutions interpolate between nondegenerate supersymmetric minima of the matter potential. Our result establishes a new class of domain walls beyond those previously classified. As a corollary, we define a precise notion of vacuum degeneracy in the supergravity theories. In addition, we found examples of global supersymmetric domain walls that do not have an analog when gravity is turned on. This result establishes that in the case of extended topological defects gravity plays a crucial, nontrivial role.