Heterotic Resolved Conifolds with Torsion, from Supergravity to CFT

We obtain a family of heterotic supergravity backgrounds describing non-Kahler warped conifolds with three-form flux and an Abelian gauge bundle, preserving N=1 supersymmetry in four dimensions. At large distance from the singularity the usual Ricci-flat conifold is recovered. By performing a Z_2 orbifold of the T^{1,1} base, the conifold singularity can be blown-up to a four-cycle, leading to a completely smooth geometry. Remarkably, the throat regions of the solutions, which can be isolated from the asymptotic Ricci-flat geometry using a double-scaling limit, possess a worldsheet CFT description in terms of heterotic cosets whose target space is the warped resolved orbifoldized conifold. Thus this construction provides exact solutions of the modified Bianchi identity. By solving algebraically these CFTs we compute the exact tree-level heterotic string spectrum and describe worldsheet non-perturbative effects. The holographic dual of these solutions, in particular their confining behavior, and the embedding of these fluxed singularities into heterotic compactifications with torsion are also discussed.Comment: 52 pages, 5 figures; v2: small correction

Asymmetric Gepner models in type II

We describe new four-dimensional type II compactifications with N=2 supersymmetry, based on asymmetric Gepner models for K3 x T^2. In more than half of these models, all the K3 moduli are lifted, giving at low energies N=2 supergravity with the STU vector multiplets and no hypermultiplets.Comment: 18 pages; v2: few typos corrected, references added ; v3: few modifications in the text, results unchanged, published versio