Anomalies as obstructions: from dimensional lifts to swampland

We revisit the relation between the anomalies in four and six dimensions and the Chern-Simons couplings one dimension below. While the dimensional reduction of chiral theories is well-understood, the question which three and five-dimensional theories can come from a general circle reduction, and are hence liftable, is more subtle. We argue that existence of an anomaly cancellation mechanism is a necessary condition for liftability. In addition, the anomaly cancellation and the CS couplings in six and five dimensions respectively determine the central charges of string-like BPS objects that cannot be consistently decoupled from gravity, a.k.a. supergravity strings. Following the completeness conjecture and requiring that their worldsheet theory is unitary imposes bounds on the admissible theories. We argue that for the anomaly-free six-dimensional theories it is more advantageous to study the unitarity constraints obtained after reduction to five dimensions. In general these are slightly more stringent and can be cast in a more geometric form, highly reminiscent of the Kodaira positivity condition (KPC). Indeed, for the F-theoretic models which have an underlying Calabi-Yau threefold these can be directly compared. The unitarity constraints (UC) are in general weaker than KPC, and maybe useful in understanding the consistent models without F-theoretic realisation. We catalogue the cases when UC is more restrictive than KPC, hinting at more refined hidden structure in elliptic Calabi-Yau threefolds with certain singularity structure.

On the singularity structure of Kahan discretizations of a class of quadratic vector fields

We discuss the singularity structure of Kahan discretizations of a class of quadratic vector fields and provide a classification of the parameter values such that the corresponding Kahan map is integrable, in particular, admits an invariant pencil of elliptic curves.

Moduli spaces of non-geometric type II/heterotic dual pairs

We study the moduli spaces of heterotic/type II dual pairs in four dimensions with $$ \mathcal{N} $$ N = 2 supersymmetry corresponding to non-geometric Calabi-Yau backgrounds on the type II side and to T-fold compactifications on the heterotic side. The vector multiplets moduli space receives perturbative corrections in the heterotic description only, and non- perturbative correction in both descriptions. We derive explicitely the perturbative corrections to the heterotic four-dimensional prepotential, using the knowledge of its singularity structure and of the heterotic perturbative duality group. We also derive the exact hypermultiplets moduli space, that receives corrections neither in the string coupling nor in α′.