Geometric Unification of Higgs Bundle Vacua

Understand

Higgs bundles are a central tool used to study a range of intersecting brane systems in string compactifications.

• Solutions to the internal gauge theory equations of motion for the corresponding worldvolume theories of branes give rise to different low energy effective field theories.
• This has been heavily used in the study of M-theory on local $G_2$ spaces and F-theory on local elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau fourfolds.
• In this paper we show that the 3D $\mathcal{N} = 1$ effective field theory defined by M-theory on a local $Spin(7)$ space unifies the Higgs bundle data associated with 4D $\mathcal{N} = 1$ M- and F-theory vacua.