Related papers: Torsional instanton effects in quantum gravity
We derive the precise relation between level matching condition and fractional instanton numbers in six dimensional, abelian and supersymmetric orbifolds of E8 x E8 heterotic string theory. The fractional part of the two E8 instanton…
We discuss the role of torsion in string theory on inducing pseudoscalar degrees of freedom (axions), which in turn couple to (gravitational) Chern-Simons (CS) anomalous terms. Such interactions can induce inflation, of running vacuum type,…
We study the relationship between instanton counting in N=4 Yang-Mills theory on a generic four-dimensional toric orbifold and the semi-classical expansion of q-deformed Yang-Mills theory on the blowups of the minimal resolution of the…
We study instanton effects along the Coulomb branch of an N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory with gauge group SU(2) on Asymptotically Locally Euclidean (ALE) spaces. We focus our attention on an Eguchi-Hanson gravitational background and…
In the 1980's, work by Coleman and by Giddings and Strominger linked the physics of spacetime wormholes to `baby universes' and an ensemble of theories. We revisit such ideas, using features associated with a negative cosmological constant…
In this talk, instantons are discussed in the presence of Lorentz violation. Conventional topological arguments are applied to classify the modified solutions to the Yang-Mills equations according to the topological charge. Explicit…
In this paper we present supersymmetric instanton and non-supersymmetric wormhole solutions for the universal hypermultiplet sector of $d=4$ N=2 supergravity theories. Instantons and wormholes are constructed as saddle points dominating…
We present a theory with axion flux monodromies coupled to gravity, that reduces to the local vacuum energy sequester below the axion mass scales. If the axion potentials include a term generated by nonperturbative couplings to gauge…
We study supergravity instantons sourced by axion (and saxion) fields in the Euclidean $AdS_3\times S^3 \times CY_2$ vacua of IIB supergravity. Such instantons are described by geodesic curves on the moduli space; the timelike geodesics can…
We study a system of fractional D3 and D(-1) branes in a Ramond-Ramond closed string background and show that it describes the gauge instantons of N=2 super Yang-Mills theory and their interactions with the graviphoton of N=2 supergravity.…
A conformal field theory on the boundary of three-dimensional asymptotic anti-de Sitter spaces which appear as near horizon geometry of D-brane bound states is discussed. It is shown that partition functions of gravitational instantons…
We analytically calculate the topological charge of the noncommutative ADHM U(N) k-instanton using the Corrigan's identity and find that the result is exactly the instanton number k.
Gravitational instantons, solutions to the euclidean Einstein equations, with topology $R^3 XS^1$ arise naturally in any discussion of finite temperature quantum gravity. This Letter shows that all such instantons (irrespective of their…
A central object in any axionic theory is its periodic potential, which is typically generated by instantons. The goal of this paper is to understand what physically happens to the theory when we lose control of the potential's instanton…
We demonstrate that quantum entanglement between primordial gravitons in dynamically decoupled gravitational sectors can parametrically enhance the tensor power spectrum during inflation. Unlike standard mechanisms relying on classical…
The prepotential in N=2 SUSY Yang-Mills theories enjoys remarkable properties. One of the most interesting is its relation to the coordinate on the quantum moduli space $u=< \tr \phi^2>$ that results into recursion equations for the…
We briefly review the key aspect of the QCD instanton vacuum in relation to the quantum breaking of conformal symmetry and the trace anomaly. We use Ji$^\prime s$ invariant mass decomposition of the energy momentum tensor together with the…
We argue that theories with multiple axions generically contain a large number of vacua that can account for the smallness of the cosmological constant. In a theory with N axions, the dominant instantons with charges Q determine the…
In this paper we examine a small but detailed test of the emergent gravity picture with explicit solutions in gravity and gauge theory. We first derive symplectic U(1) gauge fields starting from the Eguchi-Hanson metric in four-dimensional…
We argue that the non gauge invariant coupling between torsion and the Maxwell or Yang-Mills fields in Einstein-Cartan theory can not be ignored. Arguments based in the existence of normal frames in neighbourhoods, and an approximation to a…