Linear models for flux vacua (Q943572)

We construct worldsheet descriptions of heterotic flux vacua as the IR limits of \({\mathcal N}=2\) gauge theories. Space time torsion is incorporated via a 2d Green-Schwarz mechanism in which a doublet of axions cancels a one-loop gauge anomaly. Manifest \((0,2)\) supersymmetry and the compactness of the gauge theory instanton moduli space suggest that these models, which include Fu-Yau models, are stable against worldsheet instantons, implying that they, like Calabi-Yau, may be smoothly extended to solutions of the exact beta functions. Since Fu-Yau compactifications are dual to KST-type flux compactifications, this provides a microscopic description of these IIB RR-flux vacua.