Three-forms in Supergravity and Flux Compactifications

Abstract

We present a duality procedure that relates conventional four-dimensional matter-coupled N=1 supergravities to dual formulations in which auxiliary fields are replaced by field-strengths of gauge three-forms. The duality promotes specific coupling constants appearing in the superpotential to vacuum expectation values of the field-strengths. We then apply this general duality to type IIA string compactifications on Calabi-Yau orientifolds with RR fluxes. This gives a new supersymmetric formulation of the corresponding effective four-dimensional theories which includes gauge three-forms.