Extending the geometry of heterotic spectral cover constructions (Q2230457)

Spectral cover constructions for vector bundles over elliptically fibered manifolds, first developed by Friedman-Morgan-Witten-Donagi, play an important role both in algebraic geometry and in string compactification. In this nice paper the authors extend this construction to describe more general vector bundles on elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau geometries. In particular, they consider the case in which the Calabi-Yau fibration is not in Weierstrass form, but can rather contain fibral divisors or multiple sections (i.e., a higher rank Mordell-Weil group). In these cases, general vector bundles defined over such Calabi-Yau manifolds cannot be described by ordinary spectral data. To accomplish this they employ well established tools from the mathematics literature of Fourier-Mukai functors. They also generalize existing tools for explicitly computing Fourier-Mukai transforms of stable bundles on elliptic Calabi-Yau manifolds. As an example of these new tools the authors produce novel examples of chirality changing small instanton transitions. The goal of this work is to provide a geometric formalism that can substantially increase the regimes of heterotic/F-theory duality which are understood.