Orientifold planes, affine algebras and magnetic monopoles

TL;DR

This paper explores string theory backgrounds with orientifold planes, linking them to affine algebras, and constructs explicit twisted magnetic monopole solutions, providing insights into new low-energy gauge theories with twisted boundary conditions.

Contribution

It establishes a correspondence between orientifold backgrounds and affine algebras and constructs explicit twisted magnetic monopole solutions in these settings.

Findings

Mapped orientifold backgrounds to affine Kac-Moody algebras

Constructed explicit twisted magnetic monopole solutions

Proposed superpotentials for related gauge theories

Abstract

We analyze string theory backgrounds that include different kinds of orientifold planes and map out a natural correspondence to (twisted) affine Kac-Moody algebras. The low-energy description of specific BPS states in these backgrounds leads to a construction of explicit twisted magnetic monopole solutions on R^3 x S^1. These backgrounds yield new low-energy field theories with twisted boundary conditions and the link with affine algebras yields a natural guess for the superpotentials of the corresponding pure N=1, and N=1* gauge theories.