Solitons, superpotentials and calibrations

In this paper we study several issues related to the generation of the superpotential induced by background Ramond-Ramond fluxes in compactification of Type ITA string theory on Calabi-Yau four-folds. Identifying BPS solitons with D-branes wrapped over calibrated submanifolds in a Calabi-Yau space, we propose a general Formula for the superpotential and justify it comparing the supersymmetry conditions in D = 2 and D = 10 supergravity theories. We also suggest a geometric interpretation to the supersymmetric index in the two-dimensional effective theory in terms of topological invariants of the Calabi-Yau four-fold, and estimate the asymptotic growth of these invariants from BTZ black hole entropy. Finally, we explicitly construct new supersymmetric vacua for Type IIA string theory compactification on a Calabi-Yau four-fold with Ramond-Ramond fluxes. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.