Topological masses from broken supersymmetry Original Research Article

We develop a formalism for computing one-loop gravitational corrections to the effective action of D-branes. In particular, we study bulk to brane mediation of supersymmetry breaking in models where supersymmetry is broken at the tree-level in the closed string sector (bulk) by Scherk–Schwarz boundary conditions, while it is realized on a collection of D-branes in a linear or non-linear way. We compute the gravitational corrections to the fermion masses m1/2 (gauginos or goldstino) induced from the exchange of closed strings, which are non-vanishing for world-sheets with Euler characteristic −1 (“genus 3/2”) due to a string diagram with one handle and one hole. We show that the corrections have a topological origin and that in general, for a small gravitino mass, the induced mass behaves as m1/2∝g4m3/2, with g the gauge coupling. In generic orbifold compactifications however, this leading term vanishes as a consequence of cancellations caused by discrete symmetries, and the remainder is exponentially suppressed by a factor of exp(−1/α′m23/2).