The moduli space of heterotic line bundle models: a case study for the tetra-quadric

It has recently been realised that polystable, holomorphic sums of line bundles over smooth Calabi-Yau three-folds provide a fertile ground for heterotic model building. Large numbers of phenomenologically promising such models have been constructed for various classes of Calabi-Yau manifolds. In this paper we focus on a case study for the tetra-quadric - a Calabi-Yau hypersurface embedded in a product of four CP1 spaces. We address the question of finiteness of the class of consistent and physically viable line bundle models constructed on this manifold. Further, for a specific semi-realistic example, we explore the embedding of the line bundle sum into the larger moduli space of non-Abelian bundles, both by means of constructing specific polystable non-Abelian bundles and by turning on VEVs in the associated low-energy theory. In this context, we explore the fate of the Higgs doublets as we move in bundle moduli space. The non-Abelian compactifications thus constructed lead to SU(5) GUT models with an additional global B - L symmetry. The non-Abelian compactifications inherit many of the appealing phenomenological features of the Abelian model, such as the absence of dimension four and dimension five operators triggering fast proton decay. © 2014 The Author(s).