Related papers: Note on moduli stabilization, supersymmetry breaki…
It is shown how monopoles and dyons decay on curves of marginal stability in the moduli space of vacua at weak coupling in pure N=2 gauge theory with arbitrary gauge group. The analysis involves a semi-classical treatment of the monopole…
In various supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model there appear non-topological solitons due to the existence of U(1) global symmetries associated with Baryon and/or Lepton quantum numbers. Trilinear couplings (A-terms) in the…
We study heterotic string compactifications on nearly K\"ahler homogeneous spaces, including the gauge field effects which arise at order \alpha'. Using Abelian gauge fields, we are able to solve the Bianchi identity and supersymmetry…
Consistent frameworks of quantum gravity often predict the existence of large numbers of ultralight pseudoscalar degrees of freedom, forming the phenomenological landscape of the String Axiverse. The complexity of the extra-dimensional…
We study the stability of 5D gravitational solutions containing an arbitrary number of scalar fields. A closed set of equations is derived which governs the background and perturbations of N scalar fields and the metric, for arbitrary bulk…
We study the four-dimensional effective theory arising from ten-dimensional heterotic supergravity compactified on manifolds with torsion. In particular, given the heterotic superpotential appropriately corrected at $\mathcal{O}(\alpha')$…
We discuss the singularities in the moduli space of string compactifications to six dimensions with $N=1$ supersymmetry. Such singularities arise from either massless particles or non-critical tensionless strings. The points with…
It is shown that strongly coupled heterotic M-theory with anti-five-branes in the S^1/Z_2 bulk space can have meta-stable vacua which break N=1 supersymmetry and have a small, positive cosmological constant. This is demonstrated for the…
Taking into account the recently proposed poly-instanton corrections to the superpotential and combining the race-track with a KKLT respectively LARGE Volume Scenario in an intricate manner, we show that we gain exponential control over the…
We investigate compactifications of M-theory from $11\to 5\to 4$ dimensions and discuss geometrical properties of 4-d moduli fields related to the structure of 5-d theory. We study supersymmetry breaking by compactification of the fifth…
We propose a scenario to stabilize all geometric moduli - that is, the complex structure, Kahler moduli and the dilaton - in smooth heterotic Calabi-Yau compactifications without Neveu-Schwarz three-form flux. This is accomplished using the…
We investigate how super-Planckian axions can arise when type IIB 3-form flux is used to restrict a two-axion field space to a one-dimensional winding trajectory. If one does not attempt to address notoriously complicated issues like Kahler…
We study a new mechanism to dynamically break supersymmetry in the E8xE8 heterotic string. As discussed recently in the literature, a long-lived, meta-stable non-supersymmetric vacuum can be achieved in an N=1 SQCD whose spectrum contains a…
We present an explicit calculation of the spectrum of a general class of string models, corresponding to Calabi-Yau flux compactifications with h_{1,2}>h_{1,1}>1 with leading perturbative and non-perturbative corrections, in which all…
We study string inspired two-field models of large-field inflation based on axion monodromy in the presence of an interacting heavier modulus. This class of models has enough structure to approximate at least part of the backreaction…
The structure of the moduli space of N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories is analyzed from an algebraic geometric viewpoint. The connection between the fundamental fields of the ultraviolet theory, and the gauge invariant composite fields of…
We analyze a supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking model proposed by Intriligator, Seiberg and Shih in a supergravity (SUGRA) framework. This is a simple and natural setup which demands neither extra superpotential interactions nor an additional…
Starting from the non-supersymmetric, tachyon-free orientifold of type 0 string theory, we construct four-dimensional brane world models with D6-branes intersecting at angles on internal tori. They support phenomenologically interesting…
Superstring/M-theory compactified on compact Ricci flat manifolds have recently been conjectured to exhibit instabilities whenever the metrics do not have special holonomy. We use worldsheet conformal field theory to investigate…
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…