Heterotic/Type-II duality and its field theory avatars

Journal Article · Mon Oct 25 00:00:00 EDT 1999 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1301387· OSTI ID:21210258

Kiritsis, Elias ^[1]

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1. Theory Division, CERN CH-1211, Geneva 23 (Switzerland)

In these lecture notes, I will describe heterotic/type-II duality in six and four dimensions. When supersymmetry is the maximal N=4 it will be shown that the duality reduces in the field theory limit to the Montonen-Olive duality of N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory. We will consider further compactifications of type II theory on Calabi-Yau manifolds. We will understand the physical meaning of geometric conifold singularities and the dynamics of conifold transitions. When the CY manifold is a K3 fibration we will argue that the type-II ground-state is dual to the heterotic theory compactified on K3xT{sup 2}. This allows an exact computation of the low effective action. Taking the field theory limit, {alpha}{sup '}{yields}0, we will recover the Seiberg-Witten non-perturbative solution of N=2 gauge theory.

• OSTI ID: 21210258
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Journal Name: AIP Conference Proceedings Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 490; ISSN 0094-243X; ISSN APCPCS
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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