Modular forms and generalized anomaly cancellation formulas (Q413678)

In a seminal paper by \textit{L. Alvarez-Gaumé} and \textit{E. Witten} [``Gravitational anomalies'', Nucl. Phys. B 234, 269--330 (1983)], a 12-dimensional anomaly cancellation formula was obtained, which relates the Hirzebruch \(L\) forms and twisted Dirac forms. In [Commun. Math. Phys. 174, No. 1, 29--42 (1995; Zbl 0867.57021)] \textit{K. Liu} generalized this to general \(8k+4\) dimensional manifolds by developing modular invariance properties of characteristic forms. In Liu's construction, an Euclidean vector bundle \(W\) was involved, by imposing the additional condition that the first Pontryagin forms of the tangent bundle and \(W\) are the same. Furthermore, \textit{F. Han} and \textit{W. Zhang} [C. R., Math., Acad. Sci. Paris 336, No. 12, 1011--1014 (2003; Zbl 1030.53053); J. Differ. Geom. 67, No. 2, 257--288 (2004; Zbl 1132.58014)] extended these cancellation formula to a twisted version, where an extra complex line bundle was introduced to study the higher dimensional Rokhlin congruence. In this paper, the authors relax the additional condition of the first Pontryagin forms to obtain a new kind of cancellation formulas, which suggest a deep relation with the anomaly cancellation in type I string theory with gauge group \(\mathrm{SO}(32)\).