Exceptional Flux Compactifications

TL;DR

This paper explores type II flux backgrounds in string theory, embedding them into supergravity to analyze their critical points, spectra, and gauge groups, revealing a new stable non-supersymmetric AdS vacuum.

Contribution

It provides an explicit embedding of non-geometric flux backgrounds into maximal supergravity and identifies a novel stable non-supersymmetric AdS vacuum with a non-semisimple gauge group.

Findings

Discovery of a stable non-supersymmetric AdS vacuum

Explicit embedding of flux backgrounds into supergravity

Analysis of mass spectra and gauge groups

Abstract

We consider type II (non-)geometric flux backgrounds in the absence of brane sources, and construct their explicit embedding into maximal gauged D=4 supergravity. This enables one to investigate the critical points, mass spectra and gauge groups of such backgrounds. We focus on a class of type IIA geometric vacua and find a novel, non-supersymmetric and stable AdS vacuum in maximal supergravity with a non-semisimple gauge group. Our construction relies on a non-trivial mapping between SL(2) x SO(6,6) fluxes, SU(8) mass spectra and gaugings of E7(7) subgroups.