Superstrings and manifolds of exceptional holonomy (Q1900244)

The condition for the occurrence of \(N=1\) spacetime supersymmetry in the compactification of the heterotic string admits four distinct possibilities, namely compactifications down to 6, 4, 3 and 2 dimensions. While the compactification to 6 and 4 dimensions (corresponding to ``internal'' manifolds of \(K3\) and Calabi-Yau type, respectively) have been studied extensively before, the paper under review completes the study of the other two cases: compactification down to 3 on a 7-dimensional manifold of \(G_2\) holonomy and compactification down to 2 on an 8-dimensional manifold of Spin(7) holonomy. For both cases the extended chiral algebra and the space of exactly marginal deformations are identified. It turns out that the role played by the \(U(1)\) current in the \(N=2\) superconformal theories is played by the tri-critical Ising model in the case of \(G_2\) and the Ising model in the case of Spin(7) manifolds. Certain generalizations of mirror symmetry are found for these two cases. The topological twisting is also discussed in each case.