Fivebranes, membranes and non-perturbative string theory Original Research Article

Non-perturbative instanton corrections to the moduli space geometry of type IIA string theory compactified on a Calabi-Yau space are derived and found to contain order e−1/gs contributions, where gs is the string coupling. The computation reduces to a weighted sum of supersymmetric extremal maps of strings, membranes and fivebranes into the Calabi-Yau space, all three of which enter on equal footing. It is shown that a supersymmetric 3-cycle is one for which the pullback of the Kähler form vanishes and the pullback of the holomorphic three-form is a constant multiple of the volume element. Quantum mirror symmetry relates the sum in the IIA theory over supersymmetric, odd-dimensional cycles in the Calabi-Yau space to a sum in the IIB theory over supersymmetric, even-dimensional cycles in the mirror.