  F-theory compactifications on elliptic Calabi-Yau manifolds may be related to
IIb compactifications by taking a certain limit in complex structure moduli
space, introduced by A. Sen. The limit has been characterized on the basis of
SL(2,Z) monodromies of the elliptic fibration. Instead, we introduce a stable
version of the Sen limit. In this picture the elliptic Calabi-Yau splits into
two pieces, a P^1-bundle and a conic bundle, and the intersection yields the
IIb space-time. We get a precise match between F-theory and perturbative type
IIb. The correspondence is holographic, in the sense that physical quantities
seemingly spread in the bulk of the F-theory Calabi-Yau may be rewritten as
expressions on the log boundary. Smoothing the F-theory Calabi-Yau corresponds
to summing up the D(-1)-instanton corrections to the IIb theory.
