2020/03/31 by Mirjam Cvetič, Mirjam Cvetic, Jonathan J. Heckman +3
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Brane #Bundle #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Effective field theory #F-theory #Formalism (music) #Gauge theory #Higgs boson #Higgs field #Mathematical physics #Mathematics #Nonlinear Waves and Solitons #Particle physics #Physics #Pure mathematics #String theory #Theoretical physics #hep-th #math.DG
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.102.106012
published as Phys. Rev. D 102, 106012 (2020) · v2: 65 pages, 5 figures, typos corrected, reference and clarifications added
openalex publication_date 2020/11/12 · arxiv created 2020/11/18 · arxiv updated 2020/11/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Higgs bundles are a central tool used to study a range of intersecting brane systems in string compactifications. Solutions to the internal gauge theory equations of motion for the corresponding worldvolume theories of branes give rise to different low energy effective field theories. This has been heavily used in the study of M-theory on local G2 spaces and F-theory on local elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau fourfolds. In this paper we show that the 3D N=1 effective field theory defined by M-theory on a local spin(7) space unifies the Higgs bundle data associated with 4D N=1 M- and F-theory vacua. This 3D system appears as an interface with finite thickness between different 4D vacua. We develop the general formalism of M-theory on such local spin(7) spaces and build explicit interpolating solutions. This provides a complementary local gauge theory analysis of a recently proposed approach to constructing spin(7) spaces from generalized connected sums.