COORDINATE-DEPENDENT COMPACTIFICATIONS AND DISCRETE SYMMETRIES

We show how coordinate-dependent compactifications provide a generalization of the continuous deformations of free-field vacua of superstrings to extra, discrete ones. These correspond to spontaneous breaking of discrete symmetries, and also have applications to spontaneous supersymmetry breaking, for which we give a general, model-independent discussion, and a number of examples. A particular type of these discrete deformations turns out to be adequate to the study of the finite-temperature statistics of any superstring model, for which we give a simple, explicit and practical prescription. © 1990.