Heterotic String Models on Smooth Calabi-Yau Threefolds

It has recently been realised that polystable, holomorphic sums of line bundles over smooth Calabi-Yau three-folds provide a fertile ground for heterotic model building. Large numbers of phenomenologically promising such models have been constructed for various classes of Calabi-Yau manifolds. In this paper we focus on a case study for the tetra-quadric - a Calabi-Yau hypersurface embedded in a product of four CP1 spaces. We address the question of finiteness of the class of ...

Compactifications of heterotic theories on smooth Calabi-Yau manifolds remains one of the most promising approaches to string phenomenology. In two previous papers, http://arXiv.org/abs/arXiv:1106.4804 and http://arXiv.org/abs/arXiv:1202.1757, large classes of such vacua were constructed, using sums of line bundles over complete intersection Calabi-Yau manifolds in products of projective spaces that admit smooth quotients by finite groups. A total of 10^12 different vector bu...

We analyze heterotic line bundle models on elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau three-folds over weak Fano bases. In order to facilitate Wilson line breaking to the standard model group, we focus on elliptically fibered three-folds with a second section and a freely-acting involution. Specifically, we consider toric weak Fano surfaces as base manifolds and identify six such manifolds with the required properties. The requisite mathematical tools for the construction of line bundle...

In this work we provide a self-contained and modern introduction to some of the tools, obstacles and open questions arising in string compactifications. Techniques and current progress are illustrated in the context of smooth heterotic string compactifications to 4-dimensions. Progress is described on bounding and enumerating possible string backgrounds and their properties. We provide an overview of constructions, partial classifications, and moduli problems associated to Ca...

This thesis is concerned with heterotic E8 x E8 string models that can produce quasirealistic N = 1 supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model in the low-energy limit. We start rather generally by deriving the four-dimensional spectrum and Lagrangian terms from the ten-dimensional theory, through a process of compactification over six-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds, upon which holomorphic poly-stable vector bundles are defined. We then specialise to a class of heteroti...

We briefly review the recent programme to construct, systematically and algorithmically, large classes of heterotic vacua, as well as the search for the MSSM therein. Specifically, we outline the monad construction of vector bundles over complete intersection Calabi-Yau threefolds, their classification, stability, equivariant cohomology and subsequent relevance to string phenomenology. It is hoped that this top-down algorithmic approach will isolate special corners in the het...

We undertake a systematic scan of vector bundles over spaces from the largest database of known Calabi-Yau three-folds, in the context of heterotic string compactification. Specifically, we construct positive rank five monad bundles over Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces in toric varieties, with the number of Kahler moduli equal to one, two, and three and extract physically interesting models. We select models which can lead to three families of matter after dividing by a freely-acti...

In this thesis, we explore two approaches to string phenomenology. In the first half of the work, we investigate M-theory compactifications on spaces with co-dimension four, orbifold singularities. We construct M-theory on C^2/Z_N by coupling 11-dimensional supergravity to a seven-dimensional Yang-Mills theory located on the orbifold fixed-plane. The resulting action is supersymmetric to leading non-trivial order in the 11-dim Newton constant. We thereby reduce M-theory on a ...

We systematically approach the construction of heterotic E_8 X E_8 Calabi-Yau models, based on compact Calabi-Yau three-folds arising from toric geometry and vector bundles on these manifolds. We focus on a simple class of 101 such three-folds with smooth ambient spaces, on which we perform an exhaustive scan and find all positive monad bundles with SU(N), N=3,4,5 structure groups, subject to the heterotic anomaly cancellation constraint. We find that anomaly-free positive mo...

After a brief introduction into the use of Calabi--Yau varieties in string dualities, and the role of toric geometry in that context, we review the classification of toric Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces and present some results on complete intersections. While no proof of the existence of a finite bound on the Hodge numbers is known, all new data stay inside the familiar range $h_{11}+h_{12}\le 502$.