Three-forms in supergravity and flux compactifications

Abstract We present a duality procedure that relates conventional four-dimensional matter-coupled $$\mathcal{N}=1$$ N = 1 supergravities to dual formulations in which auxiliary fields are replaced by field strengths of gauge three-forms. The duality promotes specific coupling constants appearing in the superpotential to vacuum expectation values of the field strengths. We then apply this general duality to type IIA string compactifications on Calabi–Yau orientifolds with RR fluxes. This gives a new supersymmetric formulation of the corresponding effective four-dimensional theories which includes gauge three-forms