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Global anomalies on orbifolds

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We consider global anomalies for heterotic string theory formulated on orbifolds. The vanishing of certain characteristic classes in group cohomology provides sufficient conditions for the absence of global anomalies. For abelian orbifolds level matching implies these cohomology conditions, so suffices for the absence of anomalies. For nonabelian orbifolds level matching does not suffice, and there are additional constraints. We give some examples to illustrate these new constraints.

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Communicated by L. Alvarez-Gaumé

The first author is partially supported by an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. The second author is supported in part by the NSF contract no. PHY 82-15249, and in part by a fellowship from the Harvard Society of Fellows

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Freed, D.S., Vafa, C. Global anomalies on orbifolds. Commun.Math. Phys. 110, 349–389 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01212418

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