Related papers: Brane/antibrane dynamics and KKLT stability
It is known that hidden U(1) gauge factors can couple to visible U(1)'s through Kinetic Mixing. This phenomenon is shown generically to occur in nonsupersymmetric string set-ups, between branes and antibranes. Kinetic Mixing acts either to…
We study Type I string theory compactified on a T^6/Z_3 orientifold. The low-energy dynamics is most conveniently analyzed in terms of D3-branes. We show that a sector of the theory, which corresponds to placing an odd number of D3-branes…
Metastable strings can arise from a two-step symmetry breaking chain of the type $SU(2) \to U(1) \to 1$.They can decay through quantum tunneling by nucleating a monopole-antimonopole pair, and are prominent candidates for explaining the…
We argue that a generic instability afflicts vacua that arise in theories whose moduli space has large dimension. Specifically, by studying theories with multiple scalar fields we provide numerical evidence that for a generic local minimum…
In type II string theories, we examine intersecting brane constructions containing brane-antibrane pairs suspended between 5-branes, and more general non-BPS constructions. The tree-level spectra are obtained in each case. We identify…
We study the scenario that conformal dynamics leads to metastable supersymmetry breaking vacua. At a high energy scale, the superpotential is not R-symmetric, and has a supersymmetric minimum. However, conformal dynamics suppresses several…
We study the scenario that conformal dynamics leads to metastable supersymmetry breaking vacua. At a high energy scale, the superpotential is not R-symmetric, and has a supersymmetric minimum. However, conformal dynamics suppresses several…
We review the recent studies of tachyon condensation in string field theory. After introducing the open string field theory both for bosonic string and for superstring, we use them to examine the conjecture that the unstable configurations…
We argue that the vast majority of flux vacua with small cosmological constant are unstable to rapid decay to a big crunch. Exceptions are states with large compactification volume and supersymmetric and approximately supersymmetric states.…
We consider a recent proposal to solve the cosmological constant problem within the context of brane world scenarios with infinite volume extra dimensions. In such theories bulk can be supersymmetric even if brane supersymmetry is…
The moduli of N=1 compactifications of IIB string theory can be stabilized by a combination of fluxes (which freeze complex structure moduli and the dilaton) and nonperturbative superpotentials (which freeze Kahler moduli), typically…
In this set of lectures various properties of D-branes are discussed. After reviewing the basics, we discuss unstable D-brane/anti-D-brane systems, a subject pioneered by Sen. Following him, we discuss the construction of the non-BPS…
We generalize the swampland criterion forbidding stable non-supersymmetric AdS vacua and propose a new swampland conjecture forbidding stable non-supersymmetric "locally AdS" warped throats. The conjecture is motivated by the properties of…
We review some aspects of the interplay between the dynamics of branes in string theory and the classical and quantum physics of gauge theories with different numbers of supersymmetries in various dimensions.
We consider the dynamics of p anti-D3 branes inside the Klebanov-Strassler geometry, the deformed conifold with M units of RR 3-form flux around the S^3. We find that for p<<M the system relaxes to a nonsupersymmetric NS 5-brane ``giant…
Stable non-supersymmetric Anti-de Sitter (AdS) vacua of string theory are widely believed not to exist. In this letter, we analytically compute the full bosonic Kaluza-Klein spectrum around the ${\rm G_2}$-invariant non-supersymmetric…
We solve for the complete space of linearized deformations of the Klebanov-Strassler background consistent with the symmetries preserved by a stack of anti-D3 branes smeared on the $S^3$ of the deformed conifold. We find that the only…
We study the stability of supersymmetry breaking metastable vacua and supersymmetric vacua in the presence of solitons. The metastable vacua of supersymmetric QCD and those found elsewhere such as in models based on the SU(5) grand unified…
In Type II string vacua constructed from intersecting/magnetized D-branes, the supersymmetry-breaking soft terms are genericaly non-universal. It is shown that universal supersymmetry-breaking soft terms may arise in a realistic MSSM…
We find non-supersymmetric metastable vacua in four dimensional N=2 gauge theories softly broken to N=1 by a superpotential term. First we study the simplest case, namely the SU(2) gauge theory without flavors. We study the spectrum and…