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The role of instantons in describing non-perturbative aspects of globally supersymmetric gauge theories is reviewed. The cases of theories with N=1, N=2 and N=4 supersymmetry are discussed. Special attention is devoted to the intriguing…

In these lectures we start with a pedagogical introduction of the properties of open and closed superstrings and then, using the open/closed string duality, we construct the boundary state that provides the description of the maximally…

We study the existence of long-lived meta-stable supersymmetry breaking vacua in gauge theories with massless quarks, upon the addition of extra massive flavors. A simple realization is provided by a modified version of SQCD with N_{f,0} <…

M5-branes wrapping a holomorphic curve in a Calabi-Yau manifold can be used to construct four-dimensional N=1 gauge theories. In this paper we will consider M5-brane configurations corresponding to N=2 theories broken to N=1 by a…

We analyze the phase structure of supersymmetric chiral gauge theories with gauge group SU(N), an antisymmetric, and F<N+4 flavors, in the presence of a cubic superpotential. When F=N+3 the theory flows to a superconformal fixed point in…

In certain regions of the moduli space of K3 and Calabi-Yau manifolds, D-branes wrapped on non-supersymmetric cycles may give rise to stable configurations. We show that in the orbifold limit, some of these stable configurations can be…

We explore the dynamics of three-dimensional Chern-Simons gauge theories with N=2 supersymmetry and matter in the fundamental and adjoint representations of the gauge group. Realizing the gauge theories of interest in a setup of threebranes…

We consider freely acting orbifold compactifications, which interpolate in two possible decompactification limits between the supersymmetric type II string and the non-supersymmetric type 0 string. In particular we discuss how D-branes are…

We employ generalized complex geometry to investigate supersymmetric embeddings of D-brane probes in a large class of SU(2) structure manifolds. This class includes the gravity dual of mass deformation and marginal beta deformation of N=4…

The moduli space of vacua for the confining phase of N=1 $Sp(N_c)$ supersymmetric gauge theories in four dimensions is studied by M theory fivebrane. We construct M theory fivebrane configuration corresponding to the perturbation of…

A large class of equivalence relations between the moduli spaces of instantons on ALE spaces and the Higgs branches of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories, are found by means of a certain kind of duality transformation between brane…

In previous work we proposed a field theory model for multiple M2-branes based on an algebra with a totally antisymmetric triple product. In this paper we gauge a symmetry that arises from the algebra's triple product. We then construct a…

We describe fivebrane configurations in M theory whose 4-d spacetime contains N=1 supersymmetric Sp or SO gauge fields and fundamentals of these groups. We show how field-theory dualities for Sp and SO groups can be derived using these…

We consider a non-supersymmetric USp Yang-Mills Chern-Simons gauge theory coupled to fundamental flavours. The theory is realised in type IIB string theory via an embedding in a Hanany-Witten brane configuration which includes an…

We obtain the supergravity dual of N=1 supersymmetric gauge theory in 2+1 dimensions with a large number of unquenched massless flavors. The geometries found are obtained by solving the equations of motion of supergravity coupled to a…

In this paper we explore some of the features of large N supersymmetric and nonsupersymmetric gauge theories using Maldacena's duality conjectures. We shall show that the resulting strong coupling behavior of the gauge theories is…

We argue that type II string theories contain unstable NS4 branes, which descend from a conjectured unstable M4 brane of M-theory. Assuming that an M2 brane can arise in M5 brane/anti-brane annihilation, the unstable M4 brane, and also an…

We analyse the Seiberg Witten curve describing the N=2 gauge theory dual to the supergravity solution with fractional branes. Emphasis is given to those aspects that are related to stringy mechanism known as the enhancon. We also compare…

Deformations of the original F-theory background are proposed. These lead to multiple new dualities and physical phenomena. We concentrate on one model where we let seven-branes wrap a multi-centered Taub-NUT space instead of R4. This…

We give simple arguments for new non-renormalization theorems on higher derivative couplings of gauge theories to supergravity, with sixteen supersymmetries, by considerations of brane-bulk superamplitudes. This leads to some exact results…