String-string duality conjecture in six dimensions and charged solitonic strings

Abstract

It has recently been conjectured that the type IIA string theory compactified on K3 and the heterotic string theory compactified on a four dimensional torus describe identical string theories. The fundamental heterotic string can be regarded as a non-singular soliton solution of the type IIA string theory with a semi-infinite throat. We show that this solution admits 24 parameter non-singular deformation describing a fundamental heterotic string carrying electric charge and current. The charge is generated due to the coupling of the gauge fields to the anti-symmetric tensor field, and not to an explicit source term. This clarifies how soliton solutions carrying charge under the Ramond-Ramond fields can be constructed in the type IIA theory, and provides further support to the string-string duality conjecture. Similarly, the fundamental type IIA string can be regarded as a non-singular solution of the heterotic string theory with a semi-infinite throat, but this solution does not admit any deformation representing charged string. This is also consistent with the expectation that a fundamental type IIA string does not carry any charge that couples to the fields originating in the Ramond-Ramond sector.