Elusive Worldsheet Instantons in Heterotic String Compactifications

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.

20 pages, LaTeX

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• The Atiyah Class and Complex Structure Stabilization in Heterotic Calabi-Yau Compactifications
• Recent Developments in (0,2) Mirror Symmetry
• On marginal deformations of (0,2) non-linear sigma models
• Worldsheet instantons and (0,2) linear models
• Rational Curves and (0,2)-Deformations
• A McKay-Like Correspondence for (0,2)-Deformations
• Tracing symmetries and their breakdown through phases of heterotic (2,2) compactifications