Orateur
Description
The landscape of string vacua with 16 supercharges consists of various disconnected components which are nevertheless interrelated through maps taking on very different forms depending on the duality frame employed. These include asymmetric orbifolds on both the heterotic and type II sides, and frozen singularities in the F-theory and M-theory pictures. In this talk I will consider the non-supersymmetric cousins of the heterotic asymmetric orbifolds which are realized a la Scherk-Schwarz, i.e. by including (-1)^F factors in the orbifold. I will discuss their classification and on certain structures surviving supersymmetry breaking which involve their gauge symmetry enhancement. I will also comment on the problem of mapping the maximal rank component to those of reduced rank and certain associated puzzles which also involve non-supersymmetric compactifications of type II strings.
