Flux interactions on D-branes and instantons.pdf

Preprint typeset in JHEP style. - PAPER VERSION DFTT/14/2008 ROM2F/2008/19 Flux interactions on D-branes and instantons Marco Billo?1, Livia Ferro1,2, Marialuisa Frau1, Francesco Fucito3, Alberto Lerda4 and Jose F. Morales3 1Dipartimento di Fisica Teorica, Universita? di Torino and I.N.F.N. - sezione di Torino Via P. Giuria 1, I-10125 Torino, Italy 2Laboratoire de Physique The?orique E?cole Normale Supe?rieure 24, rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France 3I.N.F.N. - sezione di Roma II Via della Ricerca Scientifica, I-00133 Roma, Italy 4Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Avanzate, Universita? del Piemonte Orientale and I.N.F.N. - Gruppo Collegato di Alessandria - sezione di Torino Via V. Bellini 25/G, I-15100 Alessandria, Italy billo,ferro,frau,lerda@to.infn.it, Francesco.Fucito,Francisco.Morales@roma2.infn.it Abstract: We provide a direct world-sheet derivation of the couplings of NS-NS and R-R fluxes to various types of D-branes (including instantonic ones) by evaluating disk amplitudes among two open string vertex operators at a generic brane intersection and one closed string vertex representing the background fluxes. This world-sheet approach is in full agreement with the derivation of the flux couplings in the brane effective actions based on supergravity methods, but it is applicable also to more general brane configu- rations involving fields with twisted boundary conditions. As an application, we consider an orbifold compactification of Type IIB string theory with fractional D-branes preserving N = 1 supersymmetry and study the flux-induced fermionic mass terms both on space-fill- ing branes and on instantonic ones. Our results show the existence of a relation between the soft supersymmetry breaking and the lifting of some instanton fermionic zero-modes, which may lead to new types of non-perturbative couplings in brane-world models. Keywords: Superstrings, D-branes, Gauge Theories, Instantons. a r X i v : 0 8 0 7 .1 6 6 6 v 1 [ h e p - t h ] 1 0 J