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  • Open Access

Mapping moduli across heterotic conifolds

Lara B. Anderson*, James Gray†, Sunit A. Patil‡, and Caoimhín Scanlon§

  • Physics Department, Robeson Hall, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA

  • *Contact author: lara.anderson@vt.edu
  • †Contact author: jamesgray@vt.edu
  • ‡Contact author: sunitpatil@vt.edu
  • §Contact author: cscanlon@vt.edu
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Phys. Rev. D 114, 086011 – Published 16 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/7wbt-88y4

Abstract

In this work, we provide evidence for a duality between 4-dimensional Calabi-Yau compactifications of the heterotic string, in which the base manifolds are linked by a conifold transition. In recent work, a geometric proposal was put forward for how 5-branes and gauge bundles are carried across such transitions. It was observed that compactifications connected in this way lead to 4-dimensional effective theories with the same massless spectrum. Here we provide much stronger evidence that these heterotic conifold transitions do indeed lead to dual theories. We construct a duality map between the field spaces of the two compactifications and use it to demonstrate the agreement of large numbers of holomorphic functions appearing in the definition of the effective theories. In an example, we show that 147,440 independent superpotential Yukawa couplings agree across the duality as holomorphic functions of the moduli. In certain special cases, the putative duality studied here reduces to the target space duality of (0,2) gauged linear sigma models.

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Outline

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 086011– Published 16 October, 2026
  • Received 9 March 2026
  • Accepted 9 September 2026
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