F-theory Flux, Destabilization of Orientifolds and Soft Terms on D7--Branes

TL;DR

This paper derives a flux potential in F-theory compactifications with D7/D3 branes, showing how fluxes destabilize orientifolds and influence moduli stabilization, including soft terms on D7-branes.

Contribution

It provides a general flux potential expression in F-theory with open string moduli, and links fluxes to gaugings in supergravity, advancing understanding of moduli stabilization and soft terms.

Findings

Flux potential destabilizes orientifolds.

Most moduli are fixed except volume.

Explicit superpotential for flux compactifications.

Abstract

We use F-theory to derive a general expression for the flux potential of type II compactifications with D7/D3 branes, including open string moduli and 2-form fluxes on the branes. Our main example is F-theory on K3 $\times$ K3 and its orientifold limit T^2/Z_2 x K3. The full scalar potential cannot be derived from the bulk superpotential W=\int \Omega \wedge G_3 and generically destabilizes the orientifold. Generically all open and closed string moduli are fixed, except for a volume factor. An alternative formulation of the problem in terms of the effective supergravity is given and we construct an explicit map between the F-theory fluxes and gaugings. We use the superpotential to compute the effective action for flux compactifications on orbifolds, including the \mu-term and soft-breaking terms on the D7-brane world-volume.