Local G2-manifolds, Higgs bundles and a colored quantum mechanics

M-theory on local G2-manifolds engineers 4d minimally supersymmetric gauge theories. We consider ALE-fibered G2-manifolds and study the 4d physics from the view point of a partially twisted 7d supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory and its Higgs bundle. Euclidean M2-brane instantons descend to non-perturbative effects of the 7d supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, which are found to be in one to one correspondence with the instantons of a colored supersymmetric quantum mechanics. We compute the contributions of M2-brane instantons to the 4d superpotential in the effective 7d description via localization in the colored quantum mechanics. Further we consider non-split Higgs bundles and analyze their 4d spectrum.

On TCS G2 manifolds and 4D emergent strings

In this note, we study the Swampland Distance Conjecture in TCS G2 manifold compactifications of M-theory. In particular, we are interested in testing a refined version — the Emergent String Conjecture, in settings with 4d N = 1 supersymmetry. We find that a weakly coupled, tensionless fundamental heterotic string does emerge at the infinite distance limit characterized by shrinking the K3-fiber in a TCS G2 manifold. Such a fundamental tensionless string leads to the parametrically leading infinite tower of asymptotically massless states, which is in line with the Emergent String Conjecture. The tensionless string, however, receives quantum corrections. We check that these quantum corrections do modify the volume of the shrinking K3-fiber via string duality and hence make the string regain a non-vanishing tension at the quantum level, leading to a decompactification. Geometrically, the quantum corrections modify the metric of the classical moduli space and are expected to obstruct the infinite distance limit. We also comment on another possible type of infinite distance limit in TCS G2 compactifications, which might lead to a weakly coupled fundamental type II string theory.

Non-orientable three-submanifolds of G2-manifolds

By analogy with associative and co-associative cases, we study a class of three-dimensional non-orientable submanifolds of manifolds with a G2-structure, modelled on planes lying in aspecial G2-orbit. An application of the Cartan–Kähler theory shows that some three-manifolds can be presented in this way. We also classify all the homogeneous ones in ℝℙ7.