A calculation on moduli stabilization

In section 21.6 "Moduli stabilization and the landscape" in Zwiebach's string theory book, I read the sentence "Deriving the potential $V(R)$ associated with $R$ is a straightforward but technical calculation in general relativity". At this point I did not understand what the calculation was. I vaguely remembered a paper by Witten about instabilities in Kaluza-Klein spacetimes related to instantons. A calculation with instantons is indeed technical, but perhaps straightforward for experts. I found more information in a paper by Denef [1]. The calculation has nothing to do with instantons, but is indeed a straightforward calculation in differential geometry. In the rest of this blog post I set out the calculation in the form of a new exercise for Zwiebach's book.

On Killing spinors in general dimensions

The following property is true in four spacetime dimensions [1] [2]

If the electromagnetic field $F_{ab}$ satisfies Maxwell's equations \begin{equation*} \nabla_{[a}F_{bc]}= 0 \quad\text{and}\quad \nabla^a F_{ab} =0 \end{equation*} and there is a spinor $\psi$ such that \begin{equation}\label{eq:20161115b} (\nabla_{\mu} + i \sqrt{4 \pi} \not F \gamma_{\mu} ) \psi = 0 \end{equation} and $i \bar \psi \gamma^{\mu} \psi$ is time-like

then the Einstein equations are satisfied as well: \begin{equation*} R_{\mu\nu} - \frac{1}{2} R g_{\mu\nu} = 8 \pi T_{\mu\nu} \end{equation*}

This property (property A from now on) can for example be used to obtain the metric and electromagnetic field of the Israel-Wilson-Perjés (IWP) black holes. Because I wanted to generalize the IWP black holes to higher dimensions, I wanted to find the generalization of property A in higher dimensions.

Extremal black holes via Killing spinors

The usual way to obtain the metric and electromagnetic field of a charged black hole in general relativity is to make a spherically symmetric ansatz, insert this ansatz into the Einstein-Maxwell equations and then solve the resulting set of non-linear ordinary differential equations. In this post I explain an alternative method that uses Killing spinors. This method can be used for extremal black holes. These are black holes with charge equal to the mass.

The Weyl tensor of the five-dimensional Myers-Perry metric

In this post I write the Weyl tensor of the Myers-Perry black hole as a sum of squares.

The Weyl tensor of the D-dimensional Reissner–Nordström metric

In this post I write the Weyl tensor of the Reissner–Nordström black hole as a sum of squares of the electromagnetic field tensor.