Related papers: M-history without the M
This is an invited contribution to the Special Issue of "Foundations of Physics" titled "Forty Years Of String Theory: Reflecting On the Foundations". I have been asked to assess string theory as an outsider, and to compare it with the…
We describe the structure of string vacuum states in the supersymmetric matrix model for M theory compactified on a circle in the large-N limit. We show that the theory admits topological instanton field configurations which at…
This is the writeup of lectures delivered in Asian Pacific introductory school on superstring and the related topics in Beijing (2006) and the expanded version of these lectures in the 3rd summer school on strings, fields and holography in…
N=(2,1) heterotic string theory provides clues about hidden structure in M-theory related to string duality; in effect it geometrizes some aspects of duality. The program whereby one may deduce this hidden structure is outlined, together…
This paper explains the conjectured algebraic duality between genus zero Gromov-Witten theory and genus zero "Closed String topology". This duality in another perspective is discussed on page 87 of the book "Frobenius manifold, quantum…
In this talk I review some recent progress in heterotic and F theory model building. I then consider work in progress attempting to find the F theory dual to a class of heterotic orbifold models which come quite close to the MSSM.
We try to draw lessons for higher dimensions from the string representations recently derived for large $N$ Yang-Mills theory by Gross and Taylor, Kostov, and others, and call attention to three characteristics that should be expected of a…
It is shown that many of the conjectured dualities involving orbifold compactification of M-theory follow from the known dualities involving M-theory and string theory in ten dimensions, and the ansatz that orbifolding procedure commutes…
We consider several orbifold compactifications of M-theory and their corresponding type II duals in two space-time dimensions. In particular, we show that while the orbifold compactification of M-theory on $T^9/J_9$ is dual to the orbifold…
Two different mechanisms exist in non-perturbative String / M- theory for enhanced SU(N) (SO(2N)) gauge symmetries. It can appear in type IIA string theory or M-theory near an $A_{N-1}$ (D_N) type singularity where membrnes wrapped around…
This is a non-technical version of a talk presented at the conference, "S-Duality and Mirror Symmetry in String Theory" Trieste, June, 1996 which will appear in the proceedings.
We discuss the moduli space of nine dimensional N=1 supersymmetric compactifications of M theory / string theory with reduced rank (rank 10 or rank 2), exhibiting how all the different theories (including M theory compactified on a Klein…
This is a very brief survey of some results in the geometry of string duality delivered at a lecture given at ICM 1998, Berlin. String Duality is the statement that one kind of string theory compactified on one space is equivalent in some…
After briefly reviewing basic concepts of perturbative string theory, we explain in simple terms some of the new findings that created excitement among the string physicists. These developments include non-perturbative dualities and a…
Some aspects of light-like compactifications of superstring theory and their implications for the matrix model of M-theory are discussed.
In this note we revisit the subject of anomaly cancelation in string theory and M-theory on manifolds with String structure and give three observations. First, that on String manifolds there is no E8 x E8 global anomaly in heterotic string…
We study the spacetime decay to nothing in string theory and M-theory. First we recall a nonsupersymmetric version of heterotic M-theory, in which bubbles of nothing -- connecting the two E_8 boundaries by a throat -- are expected to be…
I briefly discuss the accomplishments of string theory that would survive a complete falsification of the theory as a model of nature and argue the possibility that such a survival may necessarily mean that string theory would become its…
In previous work we derived the topological terms in the M-theory action in terms of certain characters that we defined. In this paper, we propose the extention of these characters to include the dual fields. The unified treatment of the…
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