Massless spectra and gauge couplings at one-loop on non-factorisable toroidal orientifolds

So-called ‘non-factorisable’ toroidal orbifolds can be rewritten in a factorised form as a product of three two-tori by imposing an additional shift symmetry. This finding of Blaszczyk et al. [1] provides a new avenue to Conformal Field Theory methods, by which the vector-like massless matter spectrum – and thereby the type of gauge group enhancement on orientifold invariant fractional D6-branes – and the one-loop corrections to the gauge couplings in Type IIA orientifold theories can be computed in addition to the well-established chiral matter spectrum derived from topological intersection numbers among three-cycles. We demonstrate this framework for the Z4×ΩR orientifolds on the A3×A1×B2-type torus. As observed before for factorisable backgrounds, also here the one-loop correction can drive the gauge groups to stronger coupling as demonstrated by means of a four-generation Pati–Salam example.