String universality in six dimensions
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Taylor_String universality.pdf
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276.22 KB
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Adobe PDF
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Author(s)
Kumar, Vijay
Taylor, Washington
Date Issued
April 2011
Journal
Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics
Publisher
International Press
Citation
Kumar, Vijay and Washington Taylor. "String universality in six dimensions." Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics 15.2 (2011): 325-353. Web.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
In six dimensions, cancellation of gauge, gravitational, and mixed anomalies strongly constrains the set of quantum field theories, which can be coupled consistently to gravity. We show that for some classes of six-dimensional (6D) supersymmetric gauge theories coupled to gravity, the anomaly cancellation conditions are equivalent to tadpole cancellation and other constraints on the matter content of heterotic/type I compactifications on K3. In these cases, all consistent 6D supergravity theories have a realization in string theory. We find one example that may arise from a novel string compactification, and we identify a new infinite family of models satisfying anomaly factorization. We find, however, that this infinite family of models, as well as other infinite families of models previously identified by Schwarz are pathological. We suggest that it may be feasible to demonstrate that there is a string theoretic realization of all consistent 6D supergravity theories which have Lagrangian descriptions with arbitrary gauge and matter content. We attempt to frame this hypothesis of string universality as a concrete conjecture.
Description
http://lanl.arXiv.org/abs/0906.0987
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
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DOI of Published Version
http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.atmp/1337951926
