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Title: The anomaly that was not meant IIB

Journal Article · · Fortschritte der Physik
 [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3];  [4]
  1. University of Texas, Austin, TX (United States); OSTI
  2. Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich (Germany)
  3. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States)
  4. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (United States)

Type IIB supergravity enjoys a discrete non-Abelian duality group, which has potential quantum anomalies. In this paper we explicitly compute these, and present the bordism group that controls them, modulo some physically motivated assumptions. Quite surprisingly, we find that they do not vanish, which naively would signal an inconsistency of F-theory. Remarkably, a subtle modification of the standard 10d Chern-Simons term cancels these anomalies, a fact which relies on the specific field content of type IIB supergravity. We also discover other ways to cancel this anomaly, via a topological analog of the Green-Schwarz mechanism. These alternative type IIB theories have the same low energy supergravity limit as ordinary type IIB, but a different spectrum of extended objects. They could either be part of the Swampland, or connect to the standard theory via domain walls.

Research Organization:
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); Simons Foundation
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0013528
OSTI ID:
1976376
Journal Information:
Fortschritte der Physik, Journal Name: Fortschritte der Physik Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 70; ISSN 0015-8208
Publisher:
WileyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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