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arXiv · 1106.0316

Non-geometric Fluxes, Asymmetric Strings and Nonassociative Geometry

Ralph Blumenhagen·Andreas Deser·Dieter Lust·Erik Plauschinn·Felix Rennecke
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Abstract

We study closed bosonic strings propagating both in a flat background with constant H-flux and in its T-dual configurations. We define a conformal field theory capturing linear effects in the flux and compute scattering amplitudes of tachyons, where the Rogers dilogarithm plays a prominent role. For the scattering of four tachyons, a fluxed version of the Virasoro-Shapiro amplitude is derived and its pole structure is analyzed. In the case of an R-flux background obtained after three T-dualities, we find indications for a nonassociative target-space structure which can be described in terms of a deformed tri-product. Remarkably, this product is compatible with crossing symmetry of conformal correlation functions. We finally argue that the R-flux background flows to an asymmetric CFT.

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Ralph Blumenhagen, Andreas Deser, Dieter Lust, Erik Plauschinn, Felix Rennecke. 2011-06-01. Non-geometric Fluxes, Asymmetric Strings and Nonassociative Geometry. https://doi.org/10.1088/1751-8113/44/38/385401

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