Instabilities in heterotic M-theory induced by open membrane instantons

TL;DR

This paper investigates the effects of open membrane instantons on the stability of heterotic M-theory compactifications, revealing regions of attractive and repulsive forces that influence moduli dynamics and potential instabilities.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of how open membrane instantons induce forces between branes, affecting the stability and moduli space dynamics in heterotic M-theory.

Findings

Open membrane instantons cause both attraction and repulsion between branes.

Instabilities related to the Dine-Seiberg runaway behavior are identified.

Conditions for branes being attracted to the boundary are discussed.

Abstract

We study the effective low energy supergravity of the strongly coupled heterotic string compactified on a Calabi-Yau 3-fold with generic E8 x E8 gauge bundle. We focus on the effective potential for the chiral scalars. The effective superpotential can be studied using the dual 11-dimensional M-theory background involving insertions of M5 branes along an interval. In such backgrounds, in some regions of moduli space, the leading nonperturbative contributions are due to open membrane instantons. These instantons lead to both attractive and repulsive forces between the 5-branes and the orientifold ``M9-branes,'' depending on the region of moduli space. The resulting dynamics on moduli space include a strong coupling dual to the Dine-Seiberg instability, in which the interval grows. We discuss conditions under which the 5-branes are attracted to the wall and comment on the relevance of these results to the study of chirality-changing phase transitions in heterotic M-theory.