The Ground State of Stringy Gravity

Abstract

If the heterotic string theory is the correct “theory of everything,” then the physics of our world at energies much lower than 10¹⁹ Gev should be governed, to a good approximation, by an appropriately modified version of N = 1 supergravity in ten dimensions coupled to a supersymmetrie 1 2 E₈ x E₈ gauge field.^1,2 In fact, there is reason to believe that to lowest order in an appropriate string parameter, the low energy effective theory is the Chapline-Manton theory,³ modified so as to arrange for the cancellation of gauge, gravitational and mixed anomalies.¹ This modified Chapline-Manton theory will be abbreviated here as MCM theory.