Heterotic/heterotic and heterotic/F-theory duality

We consider heterotic target space dual (0,2) gauged linear sigma models on elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau manifolds. In this context, each half of the “dual” heterotic theories must in turn have an F-theory dual. Moreover, the apparent relationship between two heterotic compactifications seen in (0,2) heterotic target space dual pairs should, in principle, induce some putative correspondence between the dual F-theory geometries. It has previously been conjectured in the literature that (0,2) target space duality might manifest in F-theory as multiple $K3$ fibrations of the same elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau manifold. We investigate this conjecture in the context of both six-dimensional and four-dimensional effective theories and demonstrate that, in general, (0,2) target space duality cannot be explained by such a simple phenomenon alone. In all cases, we provide evidence that nongeometric data in F-theory must play at least some role in the induced F-theory correspondence while leaving the full determination of the putative new F-theory duality to future work.

Figure 1

The vertical dotted line on the right-hand side is the “vertical ${\mathbb{P}}^1$”. After change of fibration on the left-hand side, the same ${\mathbb{P}}^1$ will be the base of the dual heterotic $K3$.