Revisiting Dudas-Mourad compactifications

TL;DR

This paper explores generalized Dudas-Mourad compactifications in superstring theories, analyzing their effective field theories, dimensional reductions, and connections to the swampland conjecture, revealing conditions for consistent lower-dimensional theories.

Contribution

It extends Dudas-Mourad solutions by varying parameters, studies their dimensional reduction, and links the breakdown of effective theories to the swampland distance conjecture.

Findings

Decoupling of scalars and form fields in certain dimensions leading to Einstein-Yang-Mills theory

Identification of light Kaluza-Klein modes indicating effective theory breakdown

Support for the swampland distance conjecture in the context of warped compactifications

Abstract

Superstring theories in ten dimensions allow spacetime supersymmetry breaking at the string scale at the expense of controlled Minkowski backgrounds. The next-to-maximally symmetric backgrounds, found by Dudas and Mourad, involve a warped compactification on an interval associated with codimension-one defects. We generalize these solutions by varying the effective field theory parameters, and we discuss the dimensional reduction on the interval. In particular, we show that scalars and form fields decouple in a certain range of dimensions, yielding Einstein-Yang-Mills theory. Moreover, we find that the breakdown of this effective description due to light Kaluza-Klein modes reflects the swampland distance conjecture, supporting the consistency of the picture at least qualitatively.