Related papers: The String Landscape: On Formulas for Counting Vac…
We study string compactifications with sixteen supersymmetries. The moduli space for these compactifications becomes quite intricate in lower dimensions, partly because there are many different irreducible components. We focus primarily,…
Many N=1 heterotic string compactifications exhibit physically mysterious singularities at codimension one in the moduli space of vacua. At these singularities, Yukawa couplings of charged fields develop poles as a function of the moduli.…
The space of four dimensional string and $M$ theory vacua with non-Abelian gauge symmetry, chiral fermions and unbroken supersymmetry beyond the electroweak scale appears to be a disconnected space whose different components represent…
We study two-dimensional N=(4,4) supersymmetric gauge theories which do not have classical Higgs branches, but are believed to have isolated quantum Higgs vacua. We provide arguments for the existence of such vacua based on brane dynamics…
This article reviews recent work with M.R.Douglas and B. Shiffman on statistics of vacua in type IIb flux compactions of string/M theory.
We present evidence that the number of string/$M$ theory vacua consistent with experiments is a finite number. We do this both by explicit analysis of infinite sequences of vacua and by applying various mathematical finiteness theorems.
It is emphasized that compactified little string theories have compact moduli spaces of vacua, which globally probe compact string geometry. Compactifying various little string theories on T^3 leads to 3d theories with exact, quantum…
We explicitly construct and study the statistics of flux vacua for type IIB string theory on an orientifold of the Calabi-Yau hypersurface $P^4_{[1,1,2,2,6]}$, parametrised by two relevant complex structure moduli. We solve for these moduli…
We provide explicit formulas for the number of vacua of four-dimensional pure N=1 super Yang-Mills theories on a circle, with any simple gauge algebra and any choice of center and spectrum of line operators. These form a key ingredient in…
After a short introduction to Matrix theory, we explain how can one generalize matrix models to describe toroidal compactifications of M-theory and the heterotic vacua with 16 supercharges. This allows us, for the first time in history, to…
We discuss the unification of gauge coupling constants in non-supersymmetric open string vacua that possess the properties of Split Supersymmetry, namely the Standard Model with Higgsinos at low energies and where the Standard model…
One of the goals of the landscape program in string theory is to extract information about the space of string vacua in the form of statistical correlations between phenomenological features that are otherwise uncorrelated in field theory.…
We give an introduction to the statistical approach to studying vacua of string/M theory, and discuss recent results of Ashok and Douglas on counting supersymmetric flux vacua in type IIb Calabi-Yau compactification. To appear in the…
We show that bosonic strings may be viewed as a particular class of vacua for N=1 superstrings, and N=1 superstrings may be viewed as a particular class of vacua for N=2 strings. Continuing this line of string hierarchies, we are led to…
Identifying string theory vacua with desired physical properties at low energies requires searching through high-dimensional solution spaces - collectively referred to as the string landscape. We highlight that this search problem is…
The Standard Model group and matter spectrum is obtained in vacua of F-theory, without resorting to an intermediate unification group. The group SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1)_Y is the commutant to SU(5)_t \times U(1)_Y structure group of a Higgs…
We develop a systematic method to describe the moduli space of vacua of four dimensional $\mathcal{N}=2$ class ${\cal S}$ theories including Coulomb branch, Higgs branch and mixed branches. In particular, we determine the Higgs and mixed…
We study gauge theories which are associated with classical vacua of perturbative Type II string theory that allows for a conformal field theory description. We show that even if we compactify seven spatial dimensions (allowing for one…
In this paper we describe ideas about the string landscape, and how to relate it to the physics of the Standard Model of particle physics. First, we give a short status report about heterotic string compactifications. Then we focus on the…
We discuss the permutation group G of massive vacua of four-dimensional gauge theories with N=1 supersymmetry that arises upon tracing loops in the space of couplings. We concentrate on superconformal N=4 and N=2 theories with N=1…