Related papers: Charting the landscape of supercritical string the…
We describe the explicit construction of configurations of several 10d string theories joining at a 9d junction, providing a dynamical realization of cobordisms between multiple 10d string theories, predicted by the Cobordism Conjecture. We…
These lectures begin by reviewing the evidence for S duality of the toroidally compactified heterotic string in 4d that was obtained in the period 1992--94. Next they review recently discovered dualities that relate all five of the 10d…
We consider the (2, 0) supersymmetric theory of tensor multiplets and self-dual strings in six space-time dimensions. Space-time diffeomorphisms that leave the string world-sheet invariant appear as gauge transformations on the normal…
We give examples of string compactifications to 4d Minkowski space with different amounts of supersymmetry that can be connected by spherical domain walls. The tension of these domain walls is tunably lower than the 4d Planck scale. The…
The past year has seen enormous progress in string theory. It has become clear that all of the different string theories are different limits of a single theory. Moreover, in certain limits, one obtains a new, eleven-dimensional structure…
Duality symmetries in supergravity theories, together with their implications for string theory, are reviewed.
The implications of string theory for understanding the dimension of uncompactified spacetime are investigated. Using recent ideas in string cosmology, a new model is proposed to explain why three spatial dimensions grew large. Unlike the…
We extend strong/weak coupling duality to string theories without spacetime supersymmetry, and focus on the case of the unique ten-dimensional, nonsupersymmetric, tachyon-free $SO(16)\times SO(16)$ heterotic string. We construct a…
String theory relies on spacetime supersymmetry to guarantee the existence of stable vacua. In this review, we survey two features of non-supersymmetric strings that challenge both aspects: the appearance of tachyons and worldsheet…
We identify a class of point-particle models that exhibit a target-space duality. This duality arises from a construction based on supersymmetric quantum mechanics with a non-vanishing central charge. Motivated by analogies to string…
We construct a hierarchy of supersymmetric string theories by showing that the general N-extended superstrings may be viewed as a special class of the (N+1)-extended superstrings. As a side result, we find a twisted (N+2) superconformal…
Recently, the author has constructed a series of four dimensional non-critical string theories with eight supercharges, dual to theories of light electric and magnetic charges, for which exact formulas for the central charge of the…
String theory requires additional degrees of freedom to maintain world-sheet reparameterisation invariance at the quantum level. These are often interpreted as extra dimensions, beyond the 4 space-time. I discuss a class of quasi-realistic…
We investigate the concept of superconformal symmetry in six dimensions, applied to the interacting theory of (2,0) tensor multiplets and self-dual strings. The action of a superconformal transformation on the superspace coordinates is…
In this lecture we review some of the recent developments in string theory on an introductory and qualitative level. In particular we focus on S-T-U dualities of toroidally compactified ten-dimensional string theories and outline the…
Duality transformations with respect to rotational isometries relate supersymmetric with non-supersymmetric backgrounds in string theory. We find that non-local world-sheet effects have to be taken into account in order to restore…
A brief review of the status of duality symmetries in string theory is presented. The evidence is accumulating rapidly that an enormous group of duality symmetries, including perturbative T dualities and non-perturbative S-dualities,…
Time-dependent solutions of supergravity and string theory are studied. The examples are obtained from de Sitter deformation of gauge/gravity dualities, analytical continuation of static solutions, and ``exactly solvable'' worldsheet…
I suggest the possibility of a new string in ten dimensions. Evidence for this string is presented both from orientifold physics and from K-theory, along with a mystery concerning the M-theory description. Motivated by this possibility,…
Type-IIB supersymmetric theories have an SL(2,Z) invariance, known as U-duality, which controls the non-perturbative behavior of the theory. Under SL(2,Z) the supercharges are doublets, implying that the bosonic charges would be singlets or…