Exceptional flux compactifications

We consider type II (non-)geometric flux backgrounds in the absence of brane sources, and construct their explicit embedding into maximal gauged D = 4 supergravity. This enables one to investigate the critical points, mass spectra and gauge groups of such backgrounds. We focus on a class of type IIA geometric vacua and find a novel, non-supersymmetric and stable AdS vacuum in maximal supergravity with a non-semisimple gauge group. Our construction relies on a non-trivial mapping between SL(2) x SO(6, 6) fluxes, SU(8) mass spectra and gaugings of E-7(7) subgroups.