"The heterotic string on magnetized orbifolds"
Dr. Stefan Groot-Nibbelink
LMU Munich
We give an alternative description of the Schoen manifold as
the blow-up of a Z2xZ2 orbifold in which one Z2 factor acts
as a roto-translation. Since for this orbifold the fixed tori
are only identified in pairs but not orbifolded, four-
dimensional chirality can never be obtained in heterotic
string compactifications using standard techniques alone.
However, chirality is recovered when its tori become
magnetized. To exemplify this, we construct an E8xE8'
heterotic SU(5) GUT on the Schoen manifold with Abelian gauge
fluxes, which becomes an MSSM with three generations after
an appropriate Wilson line is associated to its freely acting
involution.