2011/07/31 by Tatsuo Kobayashi, Susha Parameswaran, Susha L. Parameswaran +3 · 32 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Compactification (mathematics) #Geometry #Heterotic string theory #Homogeneous space #Instanton #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Nonlinear Waves and Solitons #Orbifold #Particle physics #Physics #Pure mathematics #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #String (physics) #String field theory #Theoretical physics #Worldsheet #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/jhep05(2012)008
published in Journal of High Energy Physics 2012(5) (Springer Nature) · 27 pages, v2: several clarifications, matches JHEP version. v3: supercedes journal version, erratum to appear in JHEP; correction to "rule 5" equations, main ideas unchanged
openalex publication_date 2012/05/01 · arxiv created 2012/11/27 · arxiv updated 2015/05/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We study L-point couplings between twisted sector fields in heterotic orbifold compactifications, using conformal field theory. Selection rules provide an easy way to identify which couplings are non-vanishing. Those used in the current literature are gauge invariance, R-charge conservation and the space group selection rule, but they are not the whole story. We revive and refine a fourth selection rule, due to symmetries in the underlying torus lattice, and introduce a fifth one, due to the existence or not of classical worldsheet instanton solutions to mediate the couplings. We consider briefly the phenomenological consequences of the additional rules, in particular for recent orbifold constructions whose field content correspond to that of the MSSM. The structure of the exotic mass matrices is unaltered and many dimension-5 proton-decay operators vanish.