Elusive Worldsheet Instantons in Heterotic String Compactifications
Date
2012-01-01
Editors
Block, J
Distler, J
Donagi, R
Sharpe, E
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Abstract
We compute the spectrum of massless gauge singlets in some heterotic string
compactifications using Landau-Ginzburg, orbifold and non-linear sigma-model
methods. This probes the worldsheet instanton corrections to the quadratic
terms in the spacetime superpotential. Previous results predict that some of
these states remain massless when instanton effects are included. We find
vanishing masses in many cases not covered by these predictions. However, we
discover that in the case of the Z-manifold the corrections do not vanish.
Despite this, in all the examples studied, we find that the massless spectrum
in the orbifold limit agrees with the nonlinear sigma-model computation.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Science & TechnologyPhysical Sciences
Mathematics
Physics, Mathematical
Physics
LOCAL COHOMOLOGY
TORIC VARIETIES
MODULI
SPACE
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/19594Collections
More Info
Show full item recordScholars@Duke
M. Ronen Plesser
Professor of Physics
My research is in String Theory, the most ambitious attempt yet at a comprehensive
theory of the fundamental structure of the universe. In some (rather imprecise) sense,
string theory replaces the particles that form the fundamental building blocks for
conventional theories (the fields, or wave phenomena, we observe are obtained starting
from particles when we apply the principles of quantum mechanics) with objects that
are not point-like but extended in one dimension – strings. At present, th

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