English

Heterotic String Corrections from the Dual Type II String

High Energy Physics - Theory 2011-10-11 v2

Abstract

We introduce a method of using the a dual type IIA string to compute alpha'-corrections to the moduli space of heterotic string compactifications. In particular we study the hypermultiplet moduli space of a heterotic string on a K3 surface. One application of this machinery shows that type IIB strings compactified on a Calabi-Yau space suffer from worldsheet instantons, spacetime instantons and, in addition, "mixed" instantons which in a sense are both worldsheet and spacetime. As another application we look at the hyperkaehler limit of the moduli space in which the K3 surface becomes an ALE space. This is a variant of the "geometric engineering" method used for vector multiplet moduli space and should be applicable to a wide range of examples. In particular we reproduce Sen and Witten's result for the heterotic string on an A1 singularity and a trivial bundle and generalize this to a collection of E8 point-like instantons on an ALE space.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/9910248,
  title  = {Heterotic String Corrections from the Dual Type II String},
  author = {Paul S. Aspinwall and M. Ronen Plesser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9910248},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

21 pages, 5 figures, refs added