Related papers: The Family Problem: Hints from Heterotic Line Bund…
Generalizing the recent work on three-family Type I compactifications, we classify perturbative Type I vacua obtained via compactifying on the T^6/Z_2 X Z_2 X Z_3 orbifold with all possible Wilson lines. In particular, we concentrate on…
Using a result of Fujita on approximate Zariski decompositions and the singular version of Demailly's holomorphic Morse inequalities as obtained by Bonavero, we express the volume of a line bundle in terms of the absolutely continuous parts…
We present a family of globally regular ${\cal N}=1$ vacua in the D=4, ${\cal N}=4$ gauged supergravity of Gates and Zwiebach. These solutions are labeled by the ratio $\xi$ of the two gauge couplings, and for $\xi=0$ they reduce to the…
We construct hybrid linear models in which the chiral anomaly of a gauged linear sigma model is canceled by the classical anomaly of a gauged WZW model. Semi-classically, this corresponds to fibering the WZW model over the naive target…
A phenomenological analysis of the three-family local gauge group $SU(3)_c\otimes SU(3)_L\otimes U(1)_X$ with right-handed neutrinos is carried out. Instead of using the minimal scalar sector able to break the symmetry in a proper way, we…
Chiral gauge theories in two dimensions with (0,2) supersymmetry admit a much broader, and more interesting, class of vacuum solutions than their better studied (2,2) counterparts. In this thesis, we will explore some of the possibilities…
We report the most general expression for the chiral charges of a non-universal $U(1)'$ with identical charges for the first two families but different charges for the third one. The model is minimal in the sense that only standard model…
We find a new family of supersymmetric vacuum solutions in the six-dimensional chiral gauged N=(1,0) supergravity theory. They are generically of the form AdS_3 x S^3, where the 3-sphere is squashed homogeneously along its Hopf fibres. The…
We revisit the study of singular points in N=2 SQCD with classical gauge groups. Using a technique proposed recently by Gaiotto, Seiberg and Tachikawa we find that the low-energy physics at the maximally singular point involves two…
We study the scalar mass matrix of general supersymmetric theories with local gauge symmetries, and derive an absolute upper bound on the lightest scalar mass. This bound can be saturated by suitably tuning the superpotential, and its…
The embedding in SU(4)xSU(3)xSU(3) of the well studied gauge groups SU(4)xSU(2)xSU(2) and SU(3)xSU(3)xSU(3) naturally leads to family unification as opposed to simple family replication. An inescapable consequence is the predicted existence…
If a family symmetry exists for the quarks and leptons, the Higgs sector is expected to be enlarged to be able to support the transformation properties of this symmetry. There are however three possible generic ways (at tree level) of…
A holomorphic vector bundle on a Calabi-Yau threefold, X, with h^{1,1}(X)>1 can have regions of its Kahler cone where it is slope-stable, that is, where the four-dimensional theory is N=1 supersymmetric, bounded by "walls of stability". On…
Supersymmetric N=1, D=4 string vacua are known to be finite in perturbation theory. However, the effective low energy D=4, N=1 field theory lagrangian does not yield in general finite theories. In this note we present the first (to our…
We first review the three known chiral anomalies in four dimensions and then use the anomaly free conditions to study the uniqueness of quark and lepton representations and charge quantizations in the standard model. We also extend our…
In the context of the local gauge group $SU(3)_c\otimes SU(3)_L\otimes U(1)_X$, we look for possible four family models, where all the particles carry ordinary electric charges. Thirteen different anomaly-free fermion structures emerge, out…
We study the possibility of complete family unification in higher-dimensional space-time. Three families of matters in SU(5) grand unified theory are derived from a single bulk multiplet of SU(N) gauge group (N >= 9) in the framework of…
We consider a gauge symmetry extension of the standard model given by $SU(3)_C\otimes SU(2)_L\otimes U(1)_X\otimes U(1)_N\otimes Z_2$ with minimal particle content, where $X$ and $N$ are family dependent but determining the hypercharge as…
Fixed points of $N$ coupled Virasoro minimal models have recently been argued to provide large classes of compact unitary CFTs with $c>1$ and only Virasoro chiral symmetry. In this paper, we vastly increase the set of such potential…
Gravity duals for little string theories --- which give rise to four-dimensional theories that undergo permanent confinement in the infrared --- have not been studied in great detail. We address this question in the framework of heterotic…