Informal Pizza Seminar

Moduli stabilization and mirror symmetry in non-geometric backgrounds

Katrin Becker

University of Texas A&M

Type II orientifolds based on Landau-Ginzburg models are used to describe moduli stabilization for flux compactifications of type II theories from the world-sheet CFT point of view. We show that for certain types of type IIB orientifolds which have no Kahler moduli and are therefore intrinsically non-geometric, all moduli can be explicitly stabilized in terms of fluxes. The resulting four-dimensional theories can describe Minkowski as well as Anti-de-Sitter vacua. This construction provides the first string vacuum with all moduli frozen and leading to a 4D Minkowski background. Moreover, it will be shown that Minkowski space solutions are confined to strong coupling while AdS type solutions are possible are weak coupling.