Related papers: Higgs Bundles and String Phenomenology
We describe a class of supersymmetric unified models with the following properties: i) the full breaking of the gauge group is achieved by Higgs fields in the fundamental representation; ii) the correct unification of the strong and…
The geometric Langlands correspondence was described some years ago in terms of $S$-duality of $\N=4$ super Yang-Mills theory. Some additional matters relevant to this story are described here. The main goal is to explain directly why an…
String theory is at the moment the only advanced approach to a unification of all interactions, including gravity. But, in spite of the more than thirty years of its existence, it does not make any empirically testable predictions, and it…
String theories inspire a new formalism for their low-energy limits. In this approach to these field theories, spacetime duality and stringy left/right handedness are manifest. Enlarged tangent-space symmetries allow the different fields…
We show that every twist of pure supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with gauge group GL(N) can be realized as an open-string field theory in topological string theory. Our approach reinterprets twists of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory as…
The holomorphy of the superpotential along with symmetries gives very strong constraints on any stringy non-perturbative effects. This observation suggests an approach to string phenomenology. (Presented at ``Strings 95'', March 1995.
String theoretical ideas might be relevant for particle physics model building. Ideally one would hope to find a unified theory of all fundamental interactions. There are only few consistent string theories in D=10 or 11 space-time…
We initiate the study of Brane Gas Cosmology (BGC) on manifolds with non-trivial holonomy. Such compactifications are required within the context of superstring theory in order to make connections with realistic particle physics. We study…
Consequences of a strong version of the AdS/CFT correspondence for extremely stringy physics are examined. In particular, properties of N = 4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory are used to extract results about interacting tensionless strings…
Geometric structures on manifolds became popular when Thurston used them in his work on the geometrization conjecture. They were studied by many people and they play an important role in higher Teichm\"uller theory. Geometric structures on…
The Standard Model is the low-energy limit of a microscopic theory which includes extra dimensions and new symmetries. A part of my thesis consisted in constructing a new class of models with two extra dimensions. We showed that these…
We explore further the Hamiltonian formulation of Yang-Mills theory in 2+1 dimensions in terms of gauge-invariant matrix variables. Coupling to scalar matter fields is discussed in terms of gauge-invariant fields. We analyze how the…
We examine brane-world scenarios in which all the observed Standard Model particles reside on a brane but the Higgs is an elementary extra-dimensional scalar in the bulk. We show that, for codimension 2 branes, often-neglected interactions…
In string theory, the traditional picture of a Universe that emerges from the inflation of a very small and highly curved space-time patch is a possibility, not a necessity: quite different initial conditions are possible, and not…
It was pointed out by Shifman and Yung that the critical superstring on $X^{10}={\mathbb R}^4\times Y^6$, where $Y^6$ is the resolved conifold, appears as an effective theory for a U(2) Yang-Mills-Higgs system with four fundamental Higgs…
The topic of cosmic strings provides a bridge between the physics of the very small and the very large. They are predicted by some unified theories of particle interactions. If they exist, they may help to explain some of the largest-scale…
We observe that the string field theory actions for the topological sigma models describe higher or categorified Chern-Simons theories. These theories yield dynamical equations for connective structures on higher principal bundles. As a…
We revisit an old idea that gravity can be unified with Yang-Mills theory by enlarging the gauge group of gravity formulated as gauge theory. Our starting point is an action that describes a generally covariant gauge theory for a group G.…
String theory predicts that the couplings of Nature descend from dynamical fields. All known string-motivated particle physics models also come with a wide range of possible extra sectors. It is common to posit that such moduli are frozen…
These four lectures, addressed to an audience of graduate students in experimental high energy physics, survey some of the basic concepts in string theory. The purpose is to convey a general sense of what string theory is and what it has…