Massive Abelian Gauge Symmetries and Fluxes in F-theory

Understand

F-theory compactified on a Calabi-Yau fourfold naturally describes non-Abelian gauge symmetries through the singularity structure of the elliptic fibration.

• In contrast Abelian symmetries are more difficult to study because of their inherently global nature.
• We argue that in general F-theory compactifications there are massive Abelian symmetries, such as the uplift of the Abelian part of the U(N) gauge group on D7-branes, that arise from non-Kahler resolutions of the dual M-theory setup.
• The four-dimensional F-theory vacuum with vanishing expectation values for the gauge fields corresponds to the Calabi-Yau limit.