`Moduli stabilisation in the heterotic string'

Abstract: The heterotic formulation of string theory offers a fertile
framework to search for models resembling (supersymmetric extensions of) the
standard model. However, the corresponding low-energy solutions generically
contain moduli fields for which the potential is often unstable and this
complicates the search for stable vacua. I will briefly discuss how this
problem can be successfully tackled in type II string theory and why this is
much harder for the heterotic string. Then I will present a recently developed
approach to moduli stabilisation in the heterotic string which is based on
nearly Kahler compactifications. By studying explicit models on homogeneous
spaces, we will see that all moduli fields can be stabilised at consistent
values for a large class of models.