Duality Between the Webs of Heterotic and Type II Vacua

TL;DR

This paper explores the duality between heterotic and Type II string vacua, showing how transitions in one are reflected in the other, with a focus on Calabi-Yau geometries and reflexive polyhedra.

Contribution

It demonstrates a correspondence between heterotic and Type II vacua transitions, highlighting the role of reflexive polyhedra in describing symmetry and non-perturbative changes.

Findings

Duality maps heterotic K3*T^2 transitions to Type II Calabi-Yau transitions.

Reflexive polyhedra describe symmetry restoration and non-perturbative processes.

Most four-dimensional N=2 heterotic vacua have Type II duals.

Abstract

We discuss how transitions in the space of heterotic K3*T^2 compactifications are mapped by duality into transitions in the space of Type II compactifications on Calabi-Yau manifolds. We observe that perturbative symmetry restoration, as well as non-perturbative processes such as changes in the number of tensor multiplets, have at least in many cases a simple description in terms of the reflexive polyhedra of the Calabi-Yau manifolds. Our results suggest that to many, perhaps all, four-dimensional N=2 heterotic vacua there are corresponding type II vacua.