Non-supersymmetric heterotic strings on a circle

Abstract

Motivated by a recent construction of non-supersymmetric AdS₃, we revisit the O(16) × O(16) heterotic string compactified on a torus. The string one-loop potential energy has interesting dependence on the classical moduli; extrema of this potential include loci where the gauge symmetry is maximally enhanced. Focusing on the case of a circle, we use lattice embeddings to find the maximal enhancement points together with their spectra of massless and tachyonic modes. We find an extended Dynkin diagram that encodes the global structure of the moduli space, as well as all symmetry enhancements and the loci where they occur. We find 107 points of maximal enhancement with 8 that are free of tachyons. The tachyon-free points each have positive cosmological constant. We determine the profile of the potential energy near each of these points and find that one is a maximum while three are saddle points. The remaining four live at the boundary of a tachyonic region in field space. In this way, we show that every point of maximal symmetry enhancement is unstable. We further find that the curvature of this stringy potential satisfies the de Sitter swampland conjecture. Finally, we discuss the implications for constructions of AdS₃.