Comments on A,B,C Chains of Heterotic and Type II Vacua

Abstract

We construct, as hypersurfaces in toric varieties, Calabi-Yau manifolds corresponding to F-theory vacua dual to E8*E8 heterotic strings compactified to six dimensions on K3 surfaces with non-semisimple gauge backgrounds. These vacua were studied in the recent work of Aldazabal, Font, Ibanez and Uranga. We extend their results by constructing many more examples, corresponding to enhanced gauge symmetries, by noting that they can be obtained from previously known Calabi-Yau manifolds corresponding to K3 compactification of heterotic strings with simple gauge backgrounds by means of extremal transitions of the conifold type.