The effective action of type IIA Calabi–Yau orientifolds

Abstract

The N = 1 effective action for generic type IIA Calabi–Yau orientifolds in the presence of background fluxes is computed from a Kaluza–Klein reduction. The Kähler potential, the gauge kinetic functions and the flux-induced superpotential are determined in terms of geometrical data of the Calabi–Yau orientifold and the background fluxes. The moduli space is found to be a Kähler subspace of the N = 2 moduli space and shown to coincide with the moduli space arising in compactification of M-theory on a specific class of G 2 manifolds. The superpotential depends on all geometrical moduli and vanishes at leading order when background fluxes are turned off. The N = 1 chiral coordinates linearize the appropriate instanton actions such that instanton effects can lead to holomorphic corrections of the superpotential. Mirror symmetry between type IIA and type IIB orientifolds is shown to hold at the level of the effective action in the large volume—large complex structure limit.