Moduli stability in type I string orbifold models

Abstract

We analyze the stability of the moduli at the quantum level in an open-string model realizing the $\mathcal{N}=2\to \mathcal{N}=0$ spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry in four-dimensional Minkowski spacetime. In the region of moduli space where the supersymmetry breaking scale is lower than the other scales, we identify vanishing minima of the one-loop effective potential, up to exponentially small corrections. In these backgrounds, the spectrum satisfies Bose-Fermi degeneracy at the massless level.

1+27 pages, 6 figures. Based on a talk given at the "Humboldt Kolleg Frontiers in Physics: From the Electroweak to the Planck Scales,'' 15--19 September 2019, Corfu, Greece