Moduli restriction and chiral matter in heterotic string compactifications

Abstract

Supersymmetric heterotic string models, built from a stable holomorphic vector bundle $V$ on a Calabi-Yau threefold $X$, usually come with many vector bundle moduli whose stabilisation is a difficult and complex task. It is therefore of interest to look for bundle constructions which, from the outset, have as few as possible bundle moduli. One way to reach such a set-up is to start from a generic construction and to make discrete modifications of it which are available only over a subset of the bundle moduli space. Turning on such discrete 'twists' constrains the moduli to the corresponding subset of their moduli space: the twisted bundle has less parametric freedom. We give an example of a set-up where this idea can be considered concretely. Such non-generic twists lead also to new contributions of chiral matter (which greatly enhances the flexibility in model building); their computation constitutes the main issue of this note.