We show how the brane wrapping rules, recently discovered in closed oriented string theories compactified on tori, are extended to the case of the Type IIA string compactified on K3. To this aim, a crucial role is played by the duality between this t
heory and the Heterotic string compactified on a four-dimensional torus T^4. We first show how the wrapping rules are applied to the T^4/Z_N orbifold limits of K3 by relating the D0 branes, obtained as D2 branes wrapping two-cycles, to the perturbative BPS states of the Heterotic theory on T^4. The wrapping rules are then extended to the solitonic branes of the Type IIA string, finding agreement with the analogous Heterotic states. Finally, the geometric Type IIA orbifolds are mapped, via T-duality, to non-geometric Type IIB orbifolds, where the wrapping rules are also at work and consistent with string dualities.
We analyze the process of string vacuum destabilization due to instanton induced superpotential couplings which depend linearly on charged fields. These non-perturbative instabilities result in potentials for the D-brane moduli and lead to processes
of D-brane recombination, motion and partial moduli stabilization at the non-perturbative vacuum. By using techniques of D-brane instanton calculus, we explicitly compute this scalar potential in toroidal orbifold compactifications with magnetized D-branes by summing over the possible discrete instanton configurations. We illustrate explicitly the resulting dynamics in globally consistent models. These instabilities can have phenomenological applications to breaking hidden sector gauge groups, open string moduli stabilization and supersymmetry breaking. Our results suggest that breaking supersymmetry by Polonyi-like models in string theory is more difficult than expected.
We compute instantonic effects in globally consistent T^6/Z2xZ2 orientifold models with discrete torsion and magnetised D-branes. We consider fractional branes and instantons wrapping the same rigid cycles. We clarify and analyse in detail the low-en
ergy effective action on D-branes in these models. We provide explicit examples where instantons induce linear terms in the charged fields, or non-perturbative mass terms are generated. We also find examples where the gauge theory on fractional branes has conformal symmetry at one-loop, broken by instantonic mass terms at a hierarchically small energy scale.
