Flux Compactifications of String Theory on Twisted Tori

TL;DR

This paper explores string theory compactifications on twisted tori via Scherk-Schwarz reduction, analyzing flux effects, gauge symmetry breaking, and the role of T-duality in these generalized compactifications.

Contribution

It generalizes Scherk-Schwarz reductions to string and M-theory on group manifolds with flux, examining gauge symmetries and duality covariance in these compactifications.

Findings

Compactifications on G/Gamma can induce gauge symmetries from O(d,d)

Fluxes influence gauge symmetry breaking and moduli stabilization

T-duality plays a crucial role in the structure of these compactifications

Abstract

Global aspects of Scherk-Schwarz dimensional reduction are discussed and it is shown that it can usually be viewed as arising from a compactification on the compact space obtained by identifying a (possibly non-compact) group manifold G under a discrete subgroup Gamma, followed by a truncation. This allows a generalisation of Scherk-Schwarz reductions to string theory or M-theory as compactifications on G/Gamma, but only in those cases in which there is a suitable discrete subgroup of G. We analyse such compactifications with flux and investigate the gauge symmetry and its spontaneous breaking. We discuss the covariance under O(d,d), where d is the dimension of the group G, and the relation to reductions with duality twists. The compactified theories promote a subgroup of the O(d,d) that would arise from a toroidal reduction to a gauge symmetry, and we discuss the interplay between the gauge symmetry and the O(d,d,Z) T-duality group, suggesting the role that T-duality should play in such compactifications.