Flux compactifications of string theory on twisted tori

✍ Scribed by C.M. Hull; R.A. Reid-Edwards

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 387 KB
• Volume: 57
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0015-8208
• DOI: 10.1002/prop.200900076

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Global aspects of Scherk‐Schwarz dimensional reduction are discussed and it is shown that it can usually be viewed as arising from a compactification on the compact space obtained by identifying a (possibly non‐compact) group manifold 𝒢 under a discrete subgroup Γ, followed by a truncation. This allows a generalisation of Scherk‐Schwarz reductions to string theory or M‐theory as compactifications on 𝒢/Γ, but only in those cases in which there is a suitable discrete subgroup of 𝒢. We analyse such compactifications with flux and investigate the gauge symmetry and its spontaneous breaking. We discuss the covariance under O(d,d), where d is the dimension of the group 𝒢, and the relation to reductions with duality twists. The compactified theories promote a subgroup of the O(d,d) that would arise from a toroidal reduction to a gauge symmetry, and we discuss the interplay between the gauge symmetry and the O(d,d,ℤ T‐duality group, suggesting the role that T‐duality should play in such compactifications.