Forbidden territories in the string landscape

Abstract

Problems of stabilizing moduli of the type--IIB string theory on toroidal orientifolds $\T^6/\Z_2$, in presence of worldvolume fluxes on various D-branes, are considered. For $Z_2$ actions, introducing either O9 or O3 planes, we rule out the possibility of moduli stabilization in a wide class of models with $\mathcal{N}=1$ supersymmetry, characterized by the type of fluxes turned on along D-brane worldvolume. Our results, in particular, imply that Abelian worldvolume fluxes can not by themselves stabilize closed string moduli, in a consistent supersymmtric model, for above orientifold compactifications. We also discuss other $Z_2$ orientifolds of $T^6$ and show that certain other brane wrappings are also ruled out by similar consistency requirements. In specific setups we consider examples with D9-branes wrapping on a complex three-torus with its world-volume fluxes taken to be semi-homogeneous bundles and D7-branes wrapping holomorphic four-cycles of the complex three-torus carrying world-volume fluxes.