Related papers: Non-Perturbative Nekrasov Partition Function from …

In presence of a static pair of sources, the spectrum of low-lying states of whatever confining gauge theory in D space-time dimensions is described, at large source separations, by an effective string theory. In the far infrared the latter…

D-brane instantons can perturb the quantum field theories on space-time filling D-branes by interesting operators. In some cases, these D-brane instantons are novel "stringy" effects (not interpretable directly as instanton effects in the…

We define string geometry: spaces of superstrings including the interactions, their topologies, charts, and metrics. Trajectories in asymptotic processes on a space of strings reproduce the right moduli space of the super Riemann surfaces…

We derive the nonperturbative effect in type 0B string theory, which is defined by taking the double scaling limit of a one-matrix model with a two-cut eigenvalue distribution. However, the string equation thus derived cannot determine the…

We consider, in a string theory framework, physical processes of phenomenological interest in models with a low string scale. The amplitudes we study involve tree-level virtual gravitational exchange, divergent in a field-theoretical…

The effect of D-instantons on closed string scattering amplitudes may be encoded into an effective action obtained by integrating out the (transient) open string fields. In order that this respects the gauge invariance of the theory, the…

In these lectures I present a review of non-perturbative instanton effects in quantum theories, with a focus on large N gauge theories and matrix models. I first consider the structure of these effects in the case of ordinary differential…

We study the non-perturbative corrections (NPC) to the partition function of a compactified 2D string theory in a time-dependent background generated by a tachyon source. The sine-Liouville deformation of the theory is a particular case of…

We study some of the novel properties of conformal field theories with noncompact target spaces as applied to string theory. Standard CFT results get corrected by boundary terms in the target space in a way consistent with the expected…

It is shown that the generating function of $\mathscr{N}=2$ topological strings, in the heterotic weak coupling limit, is identified with the partition function of a six-dimensional Melvin background. This background, which corresponds to…

We study the instanton effective action in deformed four-dimensional N=2 and N=4 super Yang-Mills (SYM) theories. These deformed gauge theories are defined on the D-brane world-volume in the presence of constant, self-dual Ramond-Ramond…

In this paper we explicitly obtain the leading corrections to the SU(N) N=2 prepotential due to stringy instantons both in flat space-time and in the presence of a non-trivial graviphoton background field. We show that the stringy…

We review recent progress in understanding non-perturbative instanton corrections to the hypermultiplet moduli space in type II string compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds.

This thesis describes an attempt to write down covariant actions for coincident D-branes using so-called boundary fermions instead of matrices to describe the non-abelian fields. These fermions can be thought of as Chan-Paton degrees of…

D-instanton world-volume theory has open string zero modes describing collective coordinates of the instanton. The usual perturbative amplitudes in the D-instanton background suffer from infra-red divergences due to the presence of these…

We review recent progress in determining the partition function of the ABJM theory in the large N expansion, including all of the perturbative and non-perturbative corrections. Especially, we will focus on how these exact expansions are…

In this lecture we summarize some recent work on the understanding of instanton effects in string theories with 16 supersymmetries. In particular, we consider F^4 couplings using the duality between the heterotic string on T^4 and type IIA…

In typical examples of the AdS/CFT correspondence, the world-sheet theory with holes in the presence of D-branes is assumed to be equivalent in a low-energy limit to a world-sheet theory without holes for a different background such as…

We consider the probem of gauging discrete symmetries. All valid constraints on such symmetries can be understood in the low energy theory in terms of instantons. We note that string perturbation theory often exhibits global discrete…

In presence of a static pair of sources, the spectrum of low-lying states of any confining gauge theory in D space-time dimensions is described, at large source separations, by an effective string theory. Recently two important advances…