Stringy T-duality on the lattice and the twisted Villain model

TL;DR

This paper constructs a lattice framework for stringy T-duality, extending it to curved backgrounds with non-trivial fibrations, and demonstrates that its topological features can be exactly realized in lattice models.

Contribution

It introduces the twisted Villain model for lattice T-duality on curved backgrounds, capturing topological aspects exactly at finite lattice spacing.

Findings

Lattice models for fibred backgrounds reproduce T-duality's bundle-flux exchange.

The lattice defect action defines a topological defect consistent with T-duality.

Topological features of T-duality are exactly realizable in lattice-regularized models.

Abstract

We address the question of whether dualities formulated in continuum field theory can be realised exactly at finite lattice spacing, rather than only emerging in the infrared. In this context, we construct a lattice framework for a genuinely stringy form of T-duality. We extend the exact lattice T-duality of the compact boson to curved backgrounds with non-trivial circle fibrations, where the duality is no longer exhausted by the familiar exchange of momentum and winding, but also involves global topological data. To this end, we define the twisted Villain model, which couples the lattice fibre field to cochains encoding the bundle connection and the fibre-horizontal component of the $B$-field. We realise this structure in lattice models for several fibred backgrounds and recover the characteristic bundle-flux exchange of T-duality. Using a half-gauging procedure, we derive the associated lattice defect action and show that it defines a topological defect. This establishes that the distinctive topological features of T-duality on curved manifolds can be captured exactly in a lattice model, implying that this duality is not tied to a particular continuum representation is present in lattice-regularised models.