Lessons from an Extended Heterotic Mini-Landscape

We consider the key ingredients which made the Z_6II Mini-Landscape a successful ground for model building. There one observes a preferred distribution for the fields of the standard model which has direct implications on the phenomenology, since it favors a heavy top quark and a plausible solution to the $\mu$-problem. We extend the exploration to the Z_2xZ_4 orbifold, where a similar pattern is identified. To illustrate our findings we present an explicit Z_2xZ_4 model that exhibits the MSSM spectrum plus vector-like exotics at the orbifold point. We take this construction as an example of a larger class of orbifold models which were anticipated at the GUT level. Furthermore we comment on VEV configurations to decouple the exotics while maintaining a meaningful R-symmetry which could forbid the mu-term.