Moduli Potentials in Type IIA Compactifications with RR and NS Flux

Abstract

We describe a simple class of type IIA string compactifications on Calabi-Yau manifolds where background fluxes generate a potential for the complex structure moduli, the dilaton, and the K\"ahler moduli. This class of models corresponds to gauged N=2 supergravities, and the potential is completely determined by a choice of gauging and by data of the N=2 Calabi-Yau model - the prepotential for vector multiplets and the quaternionic metric on the hypermultiplet moduli space. Using mirror symmetry, one can determine many (though not all) of the quantum corrections which are relevant in these models.