Back to heterotic strings on ALE spaces. Part I. Instantons, 2-groups and T-duality

• Published in: The journal of high energy physics Vol. 2023; no. 1; pp. 176 - 38
• Main Authors: Del Zotto, Michele, Liu, Muyang, Oehlmann, Paul-Konstantin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 31-01-2023; Springer Nature B.V; SpringerOpen
• Subjects: Branes; Classical and Quantum Gravitation; Elementary Particles; F-Theory; Flavor (particle physics); Global Symmetries; High energy physics; Instantons; M-Theory; Matching; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum Field Theories; Quantum Field Theory; Quantum Physics; Regular Article - Theoretical Physics; Relativity Theory; Singularities; String Duality; String Theory; Strings; Symmetry; Global Symmetries; F-Theory; M-Theory; String Duality
• ISSN: 1029-8479; 1126-6708; 1029-8479
• DOI: 10.1007/JHEP01(2023)176

A
bstract
In this paper we begin revisiting the little string theories (LSTs) which govern the dynamics of the instantonic heterotic
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8
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five-branes probing ALE singularities, building on and extending previous results on the subject by Aspinwall and Morrison as well as Blum and Intriligator. Our focus are the cases corresponding to choices of non-trivial flat connections at infinity. The latter are in particular interesting for the exceptional ALE singularities, where a brane realization in Type I′ is lacking. Our approach to determine these models is based on 6d conformal matter: we determine these theories as generalized 6d quivers. All these LSTs have a higher-one form symmetry which forms a 2-group with the zero-form Poincaré symmetry, the R-symmetry and the other global symmetries: the matching of the R-symmetry two-group structure constant is a stringent constraint for T-dualities, which we use in combination with the matching of 5d Coulomb branches and flavor symmetries upon circle reduction, as a consistency check for the realization of the 6d LSTs we propose.