arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Anamaria Font.
We construct non-tachyonic, non-supersymmetric orientifolds of Type 0B strings in ten, six and four space-time dimensions. Typically, these models have unitary gauge groups with charged massless fermionic and bosonic matter fields. However, generically there remains an uncancelled dilaton tadpole.
We discuss how transitions in the space of heterotic K3*T^2 compactifications are mapped by duality into transitions in the space of Type II compactifications on Calabi-Yau manifolds. We observe that perturbative symmetry restoration, as well as non-perturbative processes such as changes in the number of tensor multiplets, have at least in many cases a simple description in terms of the reflexive polyhedra of the Calabi-Yau manifolds. Our results suggest that to many, perhaps all, four-dimensional N=2 heterotic vacua there are corresponding type II vacua.
We describe in detail the space of the two Kähler parameters of the Calabi--Yau manifold $¶_4^{(1,1,1,6,9)}[18]$ by exploiting mirror symmetry. The large complex structure limit of the mirror, which corresponds to the classical large radius limit, is found by studying the monodromy of the periods about the discriminant locus, the boundary of the moduli space corresponding to singular Calabi--Yau manifolds. A symplectic basis of periods is found and the action of the $Sp(6,\Z)$ generators of the modular group is determined. From the mirror map we compute the instanton expansion of the Yukawa couplings and the generalized $N=2$ index, arriving at the numbers of instantons of genus zero and genus one of each degree. We also investigate an $SL(2,\Z)$ symmetry that acts on a boundary of the moduli space.
We study, by means of mirror symmetry, the quantum geometry of the Kähler-class parameters of a number of Calabi-Yau manifolds that have $b_{11}=2$. Our main interest lies in the structure of the moduli space and in the loci corresponding to singular models. This structure is considerably richer when there are two parameters than in the various one-parameter models that have been studied hitherto. We describe the intrinsic structure of the point in the (compactification of the) moduli space that corresponds to the large complex structure or classical limit. The instanton expansions are of interest owing to the fact that some of the instantons belong to families with continuous parameters. We compute the Yukawa couplings and their expansions in terms of instantons of genus zero. By making use of recent results of Bershadsky et al. we compute also the instanton numbers for instantons of genus one. For particular values of the parameters the models become birational to certain models with one parameter. The compactification divisor of the moduli space thus contains copies of the moduli spaces of one parameter models. Our discussion proceeds via the particular models $¶_4^{(1,1,2,2,2)}[8]$ and $¶_4^{(1,1,2,2,6)}[12]$. Another example, $¶_4^{(1,1,1,6,9)}[18]$, that is somewhat different is the subject of a companion paper.
The complete structure of the moduli space of \cys\ and the associated Landau-Ginzburg theories, and hence also of the corresponding low-energy effective theory that results from (2,2) superstring compactification, may be determined in terms of certain holomorphic functions called periods. These periods are shown to be readily calculable for a great many such models. We illustrate this by computing the periods explicitly for a number of classes of \cys. We also point out that it is possible to read off from the periods certain important information relating to the mirror manifolds.
We derive the period structure of several one-modulus Calabi-Yau manifolds. With this knowledge we then obtain the generators of the duality group and the mirror map that defines the physical variable $t$ representing the radius of compactification. We also describe the fundamental region of $t$ and discuss its relation with automorphic functions. As a byproduct of our analysis we compute the non-perturbative corrections of Yukawa couplings.