Heterotic strings on Enriques surfaces

A

bstract

We study orbifold compactifications of heterotic strings on Enriques surfaces. We classify the inequivalent shift vectors for both the E ₈ × E ₈ and Spin(32)/ ℤ ₂ lattices, and analyse the light spectrum of the resulting models. We show that these models can be interpreted as compactifications of ten-dimensional non-supersymmetric heterotic strings on Enriques surfaces. For certain classes of shifts, the moduli-independent tachyons inherited from the parent theories are projected out.