Related papers: Time-dependent Backgrounds in String Theory and Du…
We find a class of (2+1)-dimensional spacetimes admitting Killing spinors appropriate to (2,0) adS-supergravity. The vacuum spacetimes include anti-de Sitter (adS) space and charged extreme black holes, but there are many others, including…
Einstein's theory in the vacuum was recently shown to possess an $SO(2)$ duality invariance, which is broken by coupling to matter. Duality invariance can be restored by enlarging the phase space of the theory to allow for violations of the…
We use gauge-gravity duality to study the stability of zero-temperature, finite baryon density states of N=4 supersymmetric SU(Nc) Yang-Mills theory coupled to a single massive fundamental-representation N=2 hypermultiplet in the large-Nc…
Double Field Theory describes the NS-NS sector of string theory and lives on a doubled spacetime. The theory has a local gauge symmetry generated by a generalization of the Lie derivative for doubled coordinates. For the action to be…
In the large-$N$ and strong-coupling limit, maximally supersymmetric SU($N$) Yang--Mills theory in $(2 + 1)$ dimensions is conjectured to be dual to the decoupling limit of a stack of $N$ D$2$-branes, which may be described by IIA…
We find a nonsupersymmetric dilatonic deformation of $AdS_5$ geometry as an exact nonsingular solution of the type IIB supergravity. The dual gauge theory has a different Yang-Mills coupling in each of the two halves of the boundary…
We study the physics of N=1 super Yang-Mills theory with gauge group U(Nc) and one adjoint Higgs field, by using the recently derived exact effective superpotentials. Interesting phenomena occur for some special values of the Higgs…
We review the prospect of obtaining tree-level de Sitter (dS) vacua and slow-roll inflation models in string compactifications. Restricting ourselves to the closed string sector and assuming the absence of NSNS-sources, we classify the…
We extend the duality between massive and topologically massive antisymmetric tensor gauge theories in arbitrary space-time dimensions to include topological defects. We show explicitly that the condensation of these defects leads, in 4…
The strongest version of the gauge/gravity duality conjecture relates the 1/N correction in super Yang-Mills theory and the quantum correction in superstring theory. We perform a quantitative test of this conjecture at finite temperature,…
The aim of this paper is to use correspondence between solutions in the $c=1$ matrix model collective field theory and coupled dilaton-gravity to a massless scalar field. First, we obtain the incoming and outgoing fluctuations for the…
We conjecture that $W$ gravity can be interpreted as the gauge theory of $\phi$ diffeomorphisms in the space of dimensionally-reduced $D=2+2$ $SU^*(\infty)$ Yang-Mills instantons. These $\phi$ diffeomorphisms preserve a volume-three form…
We study M/D-branes in a null-brane background. By taking a near horizon limit, one is left with cosmological models in the corresponding Poincar\'e patches. To deal with their usual horizons, we either extend these models to global AdS or…
A class of non-supersymmetric string backgrounds can be constructed using twists that involve space-time fermion parity. We propose a non-perturbative definition of string theory in these backgrounds via gauge theories with supersymmetry…
We present a new gauge/gravity duality construction of the Klebanov-Strassler throat which takes corrections to the anomalous mass dimension proposed in [1] into account on the gauge theory side and both the dilaton and the axion run on the…
A class of mathematical dualities have played a central role in mapping states in gauge theory to states in the spacetime string theory dual. This includes the classical Schur-Weyl duality between symmetric groups and Unitary groups, as…
Typical de Sitter (dS) vacua of gauged supergravity correspond to saddle points of the potential and often the unstable mode runs into a singularity. We explore the possibility to obtain dS points where the unstable mode goes on both sides…
Gauge/gravity duality is the conjecture that string theories have dual descriptions as gauge theories. Weakly-coupled gravity is dual to strongly-coupled gauge theories, ideal for lattice calculations. I will show precision lattice…
This article contains an overview of some recent attempts at understanding supergravity and string duals of four dimensional gauge theories using the AdS/CFT correspondence. We discuss the general philosophy underlying the various ways to…
We study gauge fields of arbitrary spin in de Sitter space. These include Yang-Mills fields and gravitons, as well as the higher-spin fields of Vasiliev theory. We focus on antipodally symmetric solutions to the field equations, i.e. ones…