F-theory is a branch of string theory developed by Cumrun Vafa. The new vacua described by F-theory were discovered by Vafa and allowed string theorists to construct new realistic vacua — in the form of F-theory compactified on elliptically fibered Calabi–Yau four-folds. The letter "F" supposedly stands for "Father".
Compactifications
F-theory is formally a 12-dimensional theory, but the only way to obtain an acceptable background is to compactify this theory on a two-torus. By doing so, one obtains type IIBsuperstring theory in 10 dimensions. The SL S-duality symmetry of the resulting type IIB string theory is manifest because it arises as the group of large diffeomorphisms of the two-dimensional torus. More generally, one can compactify F-theory on an elliptically fibered manifold, i.e. a fiber bundle whose fiber is a two-dimensional torus. For example, a subclass of the K3 manifolds is elliptically fibered, and F-theory on a K3 manifold is dual to heterotic string theory on a two-torus. Also, the moduli spaces of those theories should be isomorphic. The large number of semirealistic solutions to string theory referred to as the string theory landscape, with elements or so, is dominated by F-theory compactifications on Calabi–Yau four-folds. There are about of those solutions consistent with the Standard Model of particle physics.
F-theory, as it has metric signature, as needed for the Euclidean interpretation of the compactification spaces, is not a "two-time" theory of physics. However, the signature of the two additional dimensions is somewhat ambiguous due to their infinitesimal character. For example, the supersymmetry of F-theory on a flat background corresponds to type IIB supersymmetry with 32 real supercharges which may be interpreted as the dimensional reduction of the chiral real 12-dimensional supersymmetry if its spacetime signature is. In dimensions, the minimum number of components would be 64. The superfield C being a cocycle of the ordinary 4-differential cohomology on Calabi-Yau varieties of moduli spaces of line bundles which under decomposition into various cup product associated with a divisor of the CY4, yields intermediate Jacobians and Artin-Mazur formal groups of degrees of maximum three.
