Orientifolds of K3 and Calabi-Yau Manifolds with Intersecting D-branes

TL;DR

This paper develops methods to analyze orientifolds of type II string theory on K3 and Calabi-Yau manifolds with intersecting D-branes, determining chiral spectra and constructing models including a non-supersymmetric Standard-like model.

Contribution

It introduces a topological approach to determine chiral spectra in orientifold models without explicit string computations and constructs new models, including a non-supersymmetric Standard-like model.

Findings

Topological invariants determine chiral spectra

Constructed a non-supersymmetric Standard-like model

Discussed D-term, F-term potentials and mirror symmetry

Abstract

We investigate orientifolds of type II string theory on K3 and Calabi-Yau 3-folds with intersecting D-branes wrapping special Lagrangian cycles. We determine quite generically the chiral massless spectrum in terms of topological invariants and discuss both orbifold examples and algebraic realizations in detail. Intriguingly, the developed techniques provide an elegant way to figure out the chiral sector of orientifold models without computing any explicit string partition function. As a new example we derive a non-supersymmetric Standard-like Model from an orientifold of type IIA on the quintic Calabi-Yau 3-fold with wrapped D6-branes. In the case of supersymmetric intersecting brane models on Calabi-Yau manifolds we discuss the D-term and F-term potentials, the effective gauge couplings and the Green-Schwarz mechanism. The mirror symmetric formulation of this construction is provided within type IIB theory. We finally include a short discussion about the lift of these models from type IIB on K3 to F-theory and from type IIA on Calabi-Yau 3-folds to M-theory on G_2 manifolds.