Stringy Tachyonic Instabilities of Non-Supersymmetric Ricci Flat\n Backgrounds

2020/10/06 by Bobby Samir Acharya, B. S. Acharya, Gerardo Aldazabal +12 · 1 voice · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2010.02933

openalex publication_date 2020/10/06 · arxiv published 2020/10/06 · arxiv updated 2020/10/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Superstring/M-theory compactified on compact Ricci flat manifolds have\nrecently been conjectured to exhibit instabilities whenever the metrics do not\nhave special holonomy. We use worldsheet conformal field theory to investigate\ninstabilities of Type II superstring theories on compact, Ricci flat, spin\n3-manifolds including a worldsheet description of their spin structures. The\ninstabilities are signalled by the appearance of stringy tachyons at small\nradius and a negative (1-loop) vacuum energy density at large radius. We\nbriefly discuss the extension to higher dimensions.\n

Cited by

• Supersymmetry-breaking compactifications on Riemann-flat manifolds

Discussions

• The answer to this question lies in the GSO projection, as was (probably) first pointed out by Joseph J Atick and Edward Witten in 1988 . The following summary is very abstract, and a more down-to-ear [stackexchange, 4 points]

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