An Analysis of Anomaly Cancellation for Theories in D=10

TL;DR

This paper rigorously analyzes anomaly cancellation in ten-dimensional supergravity and string theories, demonstrating that only specific gauge groups are anomaly-free, thus constraining the landscape of consistent theories in D=10.

Contribution

It provides a detailed proof that only U(1)^496 and E_8 x U(1)^248 are anomaly-free in D=10 supergravity coupled to super Yang-Mills, expanding trace identities and anomaly polynomial analysis.

Findings

Confirmed only two anomaly-free theories in D=10.

Derived trace identities up to sixth power for classical and exceptional groups.

Reconstructed Green-Schwarz terms for the allowed theories.

Abstract

We prove that the swampland for D=10 N=1 SUGRA coupled to D=10 N=1 SYM is only populated by U(1)^496 and E_8 x U(1)^248. With this goal in mind, we review the anomalies for classical and exceptional groups, retrieving trace identities up to the sixth power of the curvature for each class of groups. We expand this idea for low-dimensional groups, for which the trace of the sixth power is known to factorize, and we retrieve such factorization. We obtain the total anomaly polynomials for individual low dimensional groups and combinations of them and finally we investigate their non-factorization, in such a way that U(1)^496and E_8 xU(1)^248 are non-trivially shown to be the only anomaly-free theories allowed in D=10. Using the method developed for checking the factorization of gauge theories, we retrieve the Green-Schwarz terms for the two theories populating the swampland.