Boundary Terms, Spinors and Kerr/CFT

Similarly as in AdS/CFT, the requirement that the action for spinors be stationary for solutions to the Dirac equation with fixed boundary conditions determines the form of the boundary term that needs to be added to the standard Dirac action in Kerr/CFT. We determine this boundary term and make use of it to calculate the two-point function for spinor fields in Kerr/CFT. This two-point function agrees with the correlator of a two dimensional relativistic conformal field theory.Comment: 15 page

Moduli Stabilization in Type IIB Orientifolds (I)

We discuss flux quantization and moduli stabilization in toroidal type IIB Z_N - or Z_N x Z_M -orientifolds, focusing mainly on their orbifold limits. After presenting a detailed discussion of their moduli spaces and effective actions, we study the supersymmetric vacuum structure of these models and derive criteria for the existence of stable minima. Furthermore, we briefly investigate the models away from their orbifold points and comment on the microscopic origin of their non-perturbative superpotentials.Comment: 97 pages + 2 figs, harvma

Lectures on Nongeometric Flux Compactifications

These notes present a pedagogical review of nongeometric flux compactifications. We begin by reviewing well-known geometric flux compactifications in Type II string theory, and argue that one must include nongeometric "fluxes" in order to have a superpotential which is invariant under T-duality. Additionally, we discuss some elementary aspects of the worldsheet description of nongeometric backgrounds. This review is based on lectures given at the 2007 RTN Winter School at CERN.Comment: 31 pages, JHEP

A ten-dimensional action for non-geometric fluxes

The NSNS Lagrangian of ten-dimensional supergravity is rewritten via a change of field variables inspired by Generalized Complex Geometry. We obtain a new metric and dilaton, together with an antisymmetric bivector field which leads to a ten-dimensional version of the non-geometric Q-flux. Given the involved global aspects of non-geometric situations, we prescribe to use this new Lagrangian, whose associated action is well-defined in some examples investigated here. This allows us to perform a standard dimensional reduction and to recover the usual contribution of the Q-flux to the four-dimensional scalar potential. An extension of this work to include the R-flux is discussed. The paper also contains a brief review on non-geometry.Comment: 47 pages; v2: minor modifications, references added, version to be published in JHE