Effective Supergravity Actions for Flop Transitions

TL;DR

This paper develops five-dimensional gauged supergravity models that accurately describe flop transitions in M-theory compactified on Calabi-Yau threefolds, incorporating hypermultiplets and a scalar potential derived from M-theory principles.

Contribution

It introduces a new class of supergravity actions modeling flop transitions with explicit hypermultiplet metrics and a scalar potential fixed by M-theory.

Findings

Explicit hypermultiplet metrics obtained via superconformal quotient

Scalar potential uniquely determined by M-theory physics

Model captures universal hypermultiplet and charged hypermultiplets

Abstract

We construct a family of five-dimensional gauged supergravity actions which describe flop transitions of M-theory compactified on Calabi-Yau threefolds. While the vector multiplet sector can be treated exactly, we use the Wolf spaces X(1+N) = U(1+N,2)/(U(1+N) x U(2)) to model the universal hypermultiplet together with N charged hypermultiplets corresponding to winding states of the M2-brane. The metric, the Killing vectors and the moment maps of these spaces are obtained explicitly by using the superconformal quotient construction of quaternion-Kahler manifolds. The inclusion of the extra hypermultiplets gives rise to a non-trivial scalar potential which is uniquely fixed by M-theory physics.