M Theory, Orientifolds and G-Flux

TL;DR

This paper explores M and F theory compactifications with fluxes, presenting new supersymmetric vacua with fewer moduli and analyzing anomaly cancellation mechanisms involving background fluxes.

Contribution

It introduces a simple construction of supersymmetric vacua with fluxes, including orientifold descriptions, and details the duality mappings to heterotic string compactifications.

Findings

Supersymmetric vacua with warp factors and fewer moduli.

Mechanism for anomaly cancellation via RR and NS fluxes.

Duality between orientifold models and heterotic string on non-Kahler spaces.

Abstract

We study the properties of M and F theory compactifications to three and four dimensions with background fluxes. We provide a simple construction of supersymmetric vacua, including some with orientifold descriptions. These vacua, which have warp factors, typically have fewer moduli than conventional Calabi-Yau compactifications. The mechanism for anomaly cancellation in the orientifold models involves background RR and NS fluxes. We consider in detail an orientifold of $K3\times T^2$ with background fluxes. After a combination of T and S-dualities, this type IIB orientifold is mapped to a compactification of the SO(32) heterotic string on a non-Kahler space with torsion.