String Vacua with N=2 Supersymmetry in Four Dimensions

Abstract

In this article we review four-dimensional string vacua with N=2 space-time supersymmetry. In particular, we will discuss several aspects of the string-string duality between the heterotic string, compactified on $K3\times T^2$, and the type II superstring compactified on a Calabi-Yau three-fold. We investigate the massless supersymmetric spectra, showing agreement for a large class of dual heterotic/type II string pairs. Some emphasis is given to non-perturbative heterotic phenomena, such as non-perturbative transitions among different vacua and strong coupling singularities, and to their geometric Calabi-Yau description on the type II side. We compare the effective N=2 supergravity actions of dual heterotic/type II string compactifications, and show that the N=2 prepotentials and also higher order gravitational couplings nicely agree in the weak heterotic coupling limit. Finally we consider extremal black hole solutions of N=2 supergravity which arise in the context of heterotic or type II N=2 compactifications. For the type II backgrounds we show how the entropies of these black holes depend on the topological data of the underlying Calabi-Yau spaces; we also construct massless black holes which are relevant for the conifold transition among different Calabi-Yau vacua.