Linear Models for Flux Vacua

TL;DR

This paper develops worldsheet models for heterotic flux vacua using N=2 gauge theories, providing a microscopic understanding of certain IIB flux compactifications and suggesting their stability and smooth extendability.

Contribution

It introduces IR descriptions of heterotic flux vacua via gauge theories with (0,2) supersymmetry, including Fu-Yau models, and links them to IIB RR-flux vacua.

Findings

Models include Fu-Yau compactifications.

Models are stable against worldsheet instanton effects.

Provides a microscopic description of IIB RR-flux vacua.

Abstract

We construct worldsheet descriptions of heterotic flux vacua as the IR limits of N=2 gauge theories. Spacetime torsion is incorporated via a 2d Green-Schwarz mechanism in which a doublet of axions cancels a one-loop gauge anomaly. Manifest (0,2) supersymmetry and the compactness of the gauge theory instanton moduli space suggest that these models, which include Fu-Yau models, are stable against worldsheet instanton effects, implying that they, like Calabi-Yaus, may be smoothly extended to solutions of the exact beta functions. Since Fu-Yau compactifications are dual to KST-type flux compactifications, this provides a microscopic description of these IIB RR-flux vacua.