Four Dimensional String/String/String Triality
Abstract
In six spacetime dimensions, the heterotic string is dual to a Type string. On further toroidal compactification to four spacetime dimensions, the heterotic string acquires an strong/weak coupling duality and an target space duality acting on the dilaton/axion, complex Kahler form and the complex structure fields respectively. Strong/weak duality in interchanges the roles of and in yielding a Type string with fields . This suggests the existence of a third string (whose six-dimensional interpretation is more obscure) that interchanges the roles of and . It corresponds in fact to a Type string with fields leading to a four-dimensional string/string/string triality. Since is perturbative for the Type string, this triality implies -duality for the heterotic string and thus fills a gap left by duality. For all three strings the total symmetry is . The is {\it perturbative} for the heterotic string but contains the conjectured {\it non-perturbative} , where is the complex scalar of the Type string. Thus four-dimensional triality also provides a (post-compactification) justification for this conjecture. We interpret the Bogomol'nyi spectrum from all three points of view. In particular we generalize the Sen-Schwarz formula for short multiplets to include intermediate multiplets also and discuss the corresponding black hole spectrum both for the theory and for a truncated ---- symmetric theory. Just as the first two strings are described by the four-dimensional {\it elementary} and {\it dual solitonic} solutions, so the
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.hep-th/9508094,
title = {Four Dimensional String/String/String Triality},
author = {M. J. Duff and James T. Liu and J. Rahmfeld},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9508094},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
36 pages, Latex, 2 figures, some references changed, minor changes in formulas and tables; to appear in Nucl. Phys. B