On the Complementarity of F-theory, Orientifolds, and Heterotic Strings

Abstract

We study F-theory duals of six dimensional heterotic vacua in extreme regions of moduli space where the heterotic string is very strongly coupled. We demonstrate how to use orientifold limits of these F-theory duals to regain a perturbative string description. As an example, we reproduce the spectrum of a $T^4/\ZZ_{4}$ orientifold as an F-theory vacuum with a singular $K3$ fibration. We relate this vacuum to previously studied heterotic $E_8\times E_8$ compactifications on $K3$.

36 pages, 4 eps figures, use harvmac and epsf. Typos corrected

References in corpus (6)

• Toroidal Compactification Without Vector Structure
• Orientifold Limit of F-theory Vacua
• Type IIB Orientifolds with NS-NS Antisymmetric Tensor Backgrounds
• The Mirror Transform of Type I Vacua in Six Dimensions
• Non-Perturbative Heterotic D=6,4 Orbifold Vacua
• F-theory and the Gimon-Polchinski Orientifold

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Anomaly Free Non-Supersymmetric Large $N$ Gauge Theories from Orientifolds
• Large N Gauge Theories from Orientifolds with NS-NS B-flux
• Non-perturbative K3 Orientifolds with NS-NS B-flux