Automorphic Structures of Heterotic Vacua

TL;DR

This paper investigates moduli stabilization in heterotic string compactifications with an enhanced Sp(4,Z) duality group, analyzing the scalar potential, its extrema, and conditions for metastable de Sitter vacua.

Contribution

It constructs an effective supergravity theory incorporating Sp(4,Z) duality, threshold corrections, and nonperturbative effects, extending previous models to genus-2 modular forms.

Findings

Fixed points of Sp(4,Z) are extrema of the scalar potential.

Derived genus-2 no-go theorems for de Sitter vacua.

Metastable positive-energy minima can arise with supersymmetry breaking.

Abstract

We study moduli stabilization in 4D effective field theories with Sp(4,$\mathbb{Z}$) self-duality inspired by heterotic orbifold compactifications with Wilson lines. The target-space duality group of these theories is enhanced from SL$(2,\mathbb{Z})$ to Sp$(4,\mathbb{Z})$, making Siegel modular forms the appropriate language to formulate the effective supergravity action. We construct the corresponding effective theory including moduli-dependent threshold corrections to the gauge kinetic function and nonperturbative effects in the superpotential. The degeneration limit of the Wilson lines distinguishes different sectors and dictates which combination of cusp forms appears in threshold corrections. We compute the resulting scalar potential and prove several general statements about its extrema. In particular, we show that the fixed points of Sp$(4,\mathbb{Z})$ are extrema of the potential, and derive genus-2 analogues of no-go theorems for de Sitter vacua. Finally, we show how positive-energy metastable minima can arise once supersymmetry is broken in the dilaton direction by nonperturbative contributions to the K\"ahler potential.