Related papers: On the Effective Description of Large Volume Compa…
A two-parameter class of higher-dimensional, strongly coupled, confining field theories in the presence of magnetic fluxes for two Abelian gauge groups admits a top-down, holographic dual description. The corresponding two-parameter family…
We show that the warped de Sitter compactifications are possible under certain conditions in D-dimensional gravitational theory coupled to a dilaton, a form field strength, and a cosmological constant. We find that the solutions of field…
We revisit the integration of fields in N=1 Supergravity with the requirement that the effective theory has a reliable two-derivative supersymmetric description. In particular we study, in a supersymmetric manifest way, the situation where…
This thesis explores an exotic class of M-theory compactifications in which the compact manifold is taken to be a Calabi-Yau five-fold. The resulting effective theory is a one-dimensional N=2 super-mechanics model that exhibits peculiar…
We review the major mathematical concepts involved in the dimensional reduction of D=11 N=1 supergravity theory over a Calabi-Yau manifold with non-trivial complex structure moduli resulting in ungauged D=5 N=2 supergravity theory with…
The type IIB matrix model is conjectured to be a nonperturbative definition of type IIB superstring theory. In this model, spacetime is a dynamical quantity and compactification of extra dimensions can be realized via spontaneous symmetry…
These are notes based on lectures given at TASI99. We review the geometry of the moduli space of N=2 theories in four dimensions from the point of view of superstring compactification. The cases of a type IIA or type IIB string compactified…
We study the non-perturbative stability of the Large Volume Scenario (LVS) of IIB string compactifications, by analysing transitions mediated by the Brown-Teitelboim (BT) brane nucleations and by Coleman De Luccia tunneling (CDL). We find…
In this letter we demonstrate the genericity of suppressed gaugino masses M_a \sim m_{3/2}/ln(M_P/m_{3/2}) in the IIB string landscape, by showing that this relation holds for D7-brane gauginos whenever the associated modulus is stabilised…
We consider a class of warped higher dimensional brane models with topology $M \times \Sigma \times S^1/Z_2$, where $\Sigma$ is a $D_2$ dimensional manifold. Two branes of codimension one are embedded in such a bulk space-time and sit at…
The Kahler potential is the least understood part of effective N=1 supersymmetric theories derived from string compactifications. Even at tree-level, the Kahler potential for the physical matter fields, as a function of the moduli fields,…
We revisit moduli stabilization on Calabi-Yau manifolds with a discrete symmetry. Invariant fluxes allow for a truncation to a symmetric locus in complex structure moduli space and hence drastically reduce the moduli stabilization problem…
We consider compactifications of type II string theory using exact internal CFT's with central charge $c=9+\epsilon$, $|\epsilon| \ll 1$, leading to an effective potential for the dilaton. For $\epsilon>0$ the potential is positive and the…
We study the cosmological properties of a metastable de Sitter vacuum obtained recently in the framework of type IIB flux compactifications in the presence of three D7-brane stacks, based on perturbative quantum corrections at both…
We show that one can find de Sitter critical points (saddle points) in models of flux compactification of Type IIB String Theory without any uplifting terms and in the presence of several moduli. We demonstrate this by giving explicit…
We find a new class of metastable de Sitter solutions in compactifications of six-dimensional supergravity motivated by type IIB or heterotic string vacua. Two Fayet-Iliopoulos terms of a local U(1) symmetry are generated by magnetic flux…
We present a duality procedure that relates conventional four-dimensional matter-coupled N=1 supergravities to dual formulations in which auxiliary fields are replaced by field-strengths of gauge three-forms. The duality promotes specific…
We study novel type IIB compactifications on the T^6/Z_2 orientifold. This geometry arises in the T-dual description of Type I theory on T^6, and one normally introduces 16 space-filling D3-branes to cancel the RR tadpoles. Here, we cancel…
The stabilisation of the dilaton and volume in tree-level flux compactifications leads to model independent and thus very powerful existence and stability criteria for dS solutions. In this paper we show that the sizes of cycles wrapped by…
We develop a method for constructing metastable de Sitter vacua in N=1 supergravity models describing the no-scale volume moduli sector of Calabi-Yau string compactifications. We consider both heterotic and orientifold models. Our main…