Non-BPS fractional branes with Bose-Fermi cancellation in asymmetric orbifolds

Abstract

Abstract We study non-BPS D-branes in the type II string vacua with chiral space-time SUSY constructed based on the asymmetric orbifolds of K3≅T4/ℤ2 $$ \mathrm{K}3\cong {T}^4/{\mathrm{\mathbb{Z}}}_2 $$ as a succeeding work of [21]. We especially focus on the fractional D-branes that contains the contributions from the twisted sector of the ℤ2 $$ {\mathrm{\mathbb{Z}}}_2 $$-orbifolding. We show that the cylinder partition functions for these fractional branes do not vanish, as in the cases of ordinary non-BPS D-branes. This aspect is in a sharp contrast with the bulk-type branes studied in [21]. We then discuss the extensions of models by including the discrete torsion depending on the spin structures, and investigate whether we obtain the vanishing self-overlaps associated to the fractional branes. The existence/absence of bose-fermi cancellations both in the closed and open string spectra as well as the massless spectra in the twisted sectors crucially depend on the discrete torsion. We find that some choices of the torsion indeed realize the vanishing self-overlaps for the fractional branes, with keeping the vanishing torus partition function intact.

Keywords

• Conformal Field Models in String Theory
• D-branes
• Superstring Vacua
• Superstrings and Heterotic Strings