Toroidal Compactification of Heterotic 6D Non-Critical Strings Down to Four Dimensions

Abstract

The low-energy limit of the 6D non-critical string theory with $N=1$ SUSY and $E_8$ chiral current algebra compactified on $T^2$ is generically an $N=2$ $U(1)$ vector multiplet. We study the analog of the Seiberg-Witten solution for the low-energy effective action as a function of $E_8$ Wilson lines on the compactified torus and the complex modulus of that torus. The moduli space includes regions where the Seiberg-Witten curves for $SU(2)$ QCD are recovered as well as regions where the newly discovered 4D theories with enhanced $E_{6,7,8}$ global symmetries appear.