Heterotic Gauge Structure of Type II K3 Fibrations

Abstract

We show that certain classes of K3 fibered Calabi-Yau manifolds derive from orbifolds of global products of K3 surfaces and particular types of curves. This observation explains why the gauge groups of the heterotic duals are determined by the structure of a single K3 surface and provides the dual heterotic picture of conifold transitions between K3 fibrations. Abstracting our construction from the special case of K3 hypersurfaces to general K3 manifolds with an appropriate automorphism, we show how to construct Calabi-Yau threefold duals for heterotic theories with arbitrary gauge groups. This generalization reveals that the previous limit on the Euler number of Calabi-Yau manifolds is an artifact of the restriction to the framework of hypersurfaces.

15 pages, 3 eps figures

References in corpus (5)

• Exact Results for N=2 Compactifications of Heterotic Strings
• K3--Fibrations and Heterotic-Type II String Duality
• Second-Quantized Mirror Symmetry
• Aspects of Duality in N=2 String Vacua
• On the Instanton Contributions to the Masses and Couplings of $E_6$ Singlets

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Calabi-Yau fourfolds for M- and F-Theory compactifications
• Introduction to Seiberg-Witten Theory and its Stringy Origin
• Toric K3-Fibred Calabi-Yau Manifolds with del Pezzo Divisors for String Compactifications
• New Higgs Transitions between Dual N=2 String Models
• Holomorphic Couplings in String Theory
• Eternal Inflation with alpha'-Corrections
• Unification of M- and F- Theory Calabi-Yau Fourfold Vacua
• The Langlands Program and String Modular K3 Surfaces
• Unification of String Dualities
• Emergent spacetime from modular motives
• Dualities and phase transitions for Calabi-Yau 3folds and 4folds
• Orbifolds of M-Theory and Type II String Theories in Two Dimensions