Abstract
The three tachyon-free non-supersymmetric string theories in ten dimensions provide a handle on quantum gravity away from the supersymmetric lamppost. However, they have not been shown to be fully consistent; although local anomalies cancel due to versions of the Green-Schwarz mechanism, there could be global anomalies, not cancelled by the Green-Schwarz mechanism, that could become fatal pathologies. We compute the twisted string bordism groups that control these anomalies via the Adams spectral sequence, showing that they vanish completely in two out of three cases (Sugimoto and SO(16)2) and showing a partial vanishing also in the third (Sagnotti 0’B model). We also compute lower-dimensional bordism groups of the non-supersymmetric string theories, which are of interest to the classification of branes in these theories via the Cobordism Conjecture. We propose a worldvolume content based on anomaly inflow for the SO(16)2 NS5-brane, and discuss subtleties related to the torsion part of the Bianchi identity. As a byproduct of our techniques and analysis, we also reprove that the outer ℤ2 automorphism swapping the two E8 factors in the supersymmetric heterotic string is also non-anomalous.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 92 |
| Journal | Journal of High Energy Physics |
| Volume | 2024 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s) 2024.
Funding
We are very thankful to Luis Alvarez-Gaume, Carlo Angelantonj, Alberto Castellano, Markus Dierigl, Dan Freed, Christian Kneisl, Giorgio Leone, Ignacio Ruiz, Cumrun Vafa, Angel Uranga, and Matthew Yu for many interesting discussions and insightful comments. We are particularly grateful to Yuji Tachikawa for explanations on equivariant topological modular forms. MM gratefully acknowledges the support and hospitality of KITP during the “Bootstrapping Quantum Gravity” Program, supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF PHY-1748958, as well as the Aspen Center for Physics, which is supported by National Science Foundation grant PHY-2210452, in the context of the program “Traversing the Particle Physics Peaks”. The travel of MM to ACP was supported by a grant of the Simons Foundation. During the early stages of this work, MM was supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation (602883,CV) and by the NSF grant PHY-2013858, by the Maria Zambrano Scholarship (UAM) CA3/RSUE/2021-00493, and currently by the Atraccion del Talento Fellowship 2022-T1/TIC-23956 from Comunidad de Madrid. The work of MD is supported by the FPI grant no. FPI SEV-2016-0597-19-3 from Spanish National Research Agency from the Ministry of Science and Innovation. MM and MD acknowledge the support of the grants CEX2020-001007-S and PID2021-123017NB-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by ERDF A way of making Europe. Part of this work was completed while IB and AD participated in the “Geometry and the Swampland” conference at IFT in 2022; we thank the conference for support. MD also wishes to acknowledge the hospitality of the Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics (ASC) at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat throughout a research visit during which part of this work was completed.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Spanish National Research Agency | |
| Family Process Institute Incorporated | |
| Comunidad de Madrid | |
| Maria Zambrano Scholarship | |
| Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics | |
| European Regional Development Fund | |
| Simons Foundation | PHY-2013858, 602883 |
| National Science Foundation Arctic Social Science Program | PHY-2210452, PHY-1748958 |
| Atraccion del Talento Fellowship | 2022-T1/TIC-23956 |
| Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades | CEX2020-001007-S, MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, PID2021-123017NB-I00 |
| Universidad Autónoma de Madrid | CA3/RSUE/2021-00493 |
Keywords
- String and Brane Phenomenology
- Superstrings and Heterotic Strings
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Nuclear and High Energy Physics