A Three-Family SU(6) Type I Compactification

TL;DR

This paper constructs a novel four-dimensional N=1 supersymmetric Type I string vacuum with an SU(6) gauge group and three chiral generations, featuring non-perturbative elements and a dual perturbative description, advancing string phenomenology.

Contribution

It presents the first consistent chiral N=1 supersymmetric string vacuum with non-perturbative features and a dual perturbative description, including explicit superpotential calculations.

Findings

Contains an SU(6) gauge subgroup with three chiral generations.

Features a non-perturbative heterotic vacuum with D5-branes.

Provides the tree-level superpotential for the model.

Abstract

We construct a four dimensional chiral N=1 space-time supersymmetric Type I vacuum corresponding to a compactification on a toroidal Z_2 X Z_2 X Z_3 orbifold. Using recent results in four dimensional orientifolds, we argue that this model has a well defined world-sheet description. An interesting feature of this model is that the gauge group contains an SU(6) subgroup with three chiral generations. Moreover, this model contains D5-branes and therefore corresponds to a non-perturbative heterotic vacuum. This is the first example of a consistent chiral N=1 supersymmetric string vacuum which is non-perturbative from the heterotic viewpoint, has a perturbative description in a dual theory, and possesses some phenomenologically interesting characteristics. We also compute the tree-level superpotential in this theory