F-theory vacua with Z3 gauge symmetry

Discrete gauge groups naturally arise in F-theory compactifications on genus-one fibered Calabi-Yau manifolds. Such geometries appear in families that are parameterized by the Tate-Shafarevich group of the genus-one fibration. While the F-theory compactification on any element of this family gives rise to the same physics, the corresponding M-theory compactifications on these geometries differ and are obtained by a fluxed circle reduction of the former. In this note, we focus on an element of order three in the Tate-Shafarevich group of the general cubic. We discuss how the different M-theory vacua and the associated discrete gauge groups can be obtained by Higgsing of a pair of five-dimensional U(1) symmetries. The Higgs fields arise from vanishing cycles in I-2-fibers that appear at certain codimension two loci in the base. We explicitly identify all three curves that give rise to the corresponding Higgs fields. In this analysis the investigation of different resolved phases of the underlying geometry plays a crucial role. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.