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Abstract:

The superpotential in four-dimensional heterotic effective theories contains terms arising from holomorphic Chern-Simons invariants associated to the gauge and tangent bundles of the compactification geometry. These effects are crucial for a number of key features of the theory, including vacuum stability and moduli stabilization. Despite their importance, few tools exist in the literature to compute such effects in a given heterotic vacuum. In this work we present new techniques to explicitly determine holomorphic Chern-Simons invariants in heterotic string compactifications. The key technical ingredient in our computations are real bundle morphisms between the gauge and tangent bundles. We find that there are large classes of examples, beyond the standard embedding, where the Chern-Simons superpotential vanishes. We also provide explicit examples for non-flat bundles where it is non-vanishing and non-integer quantized, generalizing previous results for Wilson lines.

Abstract:

We study superpotentials from worldsheet instantons in heterotic Calabi-Yau compactifications for vector bundles constructed from line bundle sums, monads and extensions. Within a certain class of manifolds and for certain second homology classes, we derive simple necessary conditions for a non-vanishing instanton superpotential. These show that non-vanishing instanton superpotentials are rare and require a specific pattern for the bundle construction. For the class of monad and extension bundles with this pattern, we derive a sufficient criterion for non-vanishing instanton superpotentials based on an affine Hilbert function. This criterion shows that a non-zero instanton superpotential is common within this class. The criterion can be checked using commutative algebra methods only and depends on the topological data defining the Calabi-Yau X and the vector bundle V.