Maximal Enhancements in Eight-Dimensional Non-Supersymmetric Heterotic Strings

Abstract

We classify maximally enhanced, rank-preserving non-supersymmetric heterotic strings in eight dimensions by studying orbifolds of supersymmetric heterotic strings on $T^2$. We first review the construction in nine dimensions, where it reproduces the $95$ maximally semisimple enhancement points obtained from previous extended-Dynkin analyses. We then start from the maximally enhanced supersymmetric Narain points in eight dimensions and use Kac's theorem to enumerate candidate order-two inner actions, retaining only those that lift to consistent Narain-lattice shifts. This gives $1210$ maximal enhancement points, of which $71$ are tachyon-free, and $25$ have neither tachyons nor shifted-sector massless scalars. For each entry we determine the gauge algebra and the low-lying scalar and fermion spectra, and for the tachyon-free cases we evaluate the one-loop cosmological constant. For the 25 subcases without shifted-sector massless scalars, we further compute the Hessian of the one-loop potential and test the refined de Sitter swampland conjecture.