Torsional Heterotic Geometries

TL;DR

This paper constructs new torsional heterotic string backgrounds via duality, explores their geometric properties, and suggests a vast landscape of such geometries, including quantum exact metrics related to NS5-branes.

Contribution

It introduces novel torsional heterotic backgrounds using duality with orientifold flux compactifications and discusses the role of connection choices in the Bianchi identity.

Findings

Duality provides a perturbative solution to the Bianchi identity.

Existence of a larger landscape of torsional geometries proposed.

Quantum exact metrics for NS5-branes on elliptic spaces presented.

Abstract

We construct new examples of torsional heterotic backgrounds using duality with orientifold flux compactifications. We explain how duality provides a perturbative solution to the type I/heterotic string Bianchi identity. The choice of connection used in the Bianchi identity plays an important role in the construction. We propose the existence of a much larger landscape of compact torsional geometries using string duality. Finally, we present some quantum exact metrics that correspond to NS5-branes placed on an elliptic space. These metrics describe how torus isometries are broken by NS flux.