World-sheet Instanton Superpotentials in Heterotic String theory and their Moduli Dependence

TL;DR

This paper investigates how world-sheet instantons contribute to the superpotential in heterotic string theory, focusing on the moduli dependence of determinants and providing a geometric framework for understanding known cases.

Contribution

It introduces a geometric approach to describe Pfaffians for spectral bundles, generalizing previous numerical results and identifying cases with factorizing or vanishing superpotentials.

Findings

Provides a geometric description of Pfaffians for spectral bundles.

Lists cases with factorising or vanishing superpotential.

Generalizes previous experimental results.

Abstract

To understand in detail the contribution of a world-sheet instanton to the superpotential in a heterotic string compactification, one has to understand the moduli dependence (bundle and complex structure moduli) of the one-loop determinants from the fluctuations, which accompany the classical exponential contribution (involving K\"ahler moduli) when evaluating the world-volume partition function. Here we use techniques to describe geometrically these Pfaffians for spectral bundles over rational base curves in elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau threefolds, and provide a (partially exhaustive) list of cases involving {\em factorising} (or vanishing) superpotential. This gives a conceptual explanation and generalisation of the few previously known cases which were obtained just experimentally by a numerical computation.