Related papers: Lessons from an Extended Heterotic Mini-Landscape

Orbifold compactification of heterotic E8 x E8 string theory is a source for promising grand unified model building. It can accommodate the successful aspects of grand unification while avoiding problems like doublet-triplet splitting in…

String consistency conditions are stronger than anomaly cancellation and can require the addition of exotics in the visible sector. We study such exotics and demonstrate that they may account for the modest excess at $750$ GeV in recent…

We classify N=1 orbifolds on the E_6 root lattice and investigate explicit model constructions on the Z_3xZ_3 orbifold in heterotic string theory. Interestingly some of the twisted sectors from the Z_3xZ_3 orbifold on the E_6 root lattice…

Heterotic orbifold models are promising candidates for models with MSSM like spectra. But orbifolds only correspond to a special place in moduli space, the bigger picture is described by the moduli space of Calabi-Yau spaces. In this talk…

The experimental data of the past decade suggests that the quantum gravity vacuum should possess two key ingredients. The existence of three generations and their embedding in SO(10) representations. The Z2XZ2 orbifold of the heterotic…

The observable sector of the "minimal heterotic standard model" has precisely the matter spectrum of the MSSM: three families of quarks and leptons, each with a right-handed neutrino, and one Higgs-Higgs conjugate pair. In this paper, it is…

We provide an approach to study exotic phenomena in relatively small 4-manifolds that captures many different exotic behaviors under one umbrella. These phenomena include exotic smooth structures on 4-manifolds with $b_2=1$, examples of…

We revisit an orbifold matrix model obtained as a restriction of the type IIB matrix model on a Z_3-invariant sector. An investigation of its moduli space of vacua is performed and issues related to chiral gauge theory and gravity are…

Supersymmetric models with low electroweak fine-tuning are more prevalent on the string landscape than fine-tuned models. We assume a fertile patch of landscape vacua containing the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) as a…

The recent excess in diphoton events around 750 GeV seen by the ATLAS and CMS experiments could be hinting at the existence of new vector-like charged matter around the TeV scale which couples to a singlet. Such a spectrum of exotics arises…

Systematic classification of Z2xZ2 orbifold compactifications of the heterotic-string was pursued by using its free fermion formulation. The method entails random generation of string vacua and analysis of their entire spectra, and led to…

The use of discrete symmetries, especially abelian ones, in physics beyond the standard model of particle physics is discussed. A method is developed how a general, abelian, discrete symmetry can be obtained via spontaneous symmetry…

We investigate in the simplest compact D=4 N=1 Type IIB orientifold models the sigma-model symmetry suggested by the proposed duality of these models to heterotic orbifold vacua. This symmetry is known to be present at the classical level,…

We examine the extent to which it is possible to realize the NMSSM "ideal Higgs" models espoused in several papers by Gunion et al in the context of partially universal GUT scale boundary conditions. To this end we use the powerful…

We present a new supersymmetric extension of the standard model. The model is constructed in warped space, with a unified bulk symmetry broken by boundary conditions on both the Planck and TeV branes. In the supersymmetric limit, the…

There exist tree-level generalizations of the Type-I and Type-III seesaw mechanisms that realize neutrino mass via low-energy effective operators with d>5. However, these generalizations also give radiative masses that can dominate the…

We study the minimal supersymmetric standard model derived from the $Z_8$ orbifold models and its hidden sectors. We use a target-space duality anomaly cancellation so as to investigate hidden sectors consistent with the MSSM unification.…

We discuss the construction of heterotic--string models that allow for the existence of an extra $Z^\prime$ at low scales. One of the main difficulties encountered is that the desired symmetries tend to be anomalous in the prevailing three…

We study models with heavy exotics that account for the LHC $750$ GeV diphoton excess in light of current vector-like quark bounds. Utilizing only exotics that may appear in three-stack and four-stack D-brane models, we show that a narrow…

We discuss singlet extensions of the MSSM with $\Z4^R$ symmetry. We show that holomorphic zeros can avoid a potentially large coefficient of the term linear in the singlet. The emerging model has both an effective mu term and a…