Related papers: String theory as a Lilliputian world
We present a cosmological landscape where the classical closed string tachyon field plays an important role in the framework of a critical bosonic compactification. Our cosmological solutions for a universe with constant curvature describes…
This is a review. Comments are welcome. The observation that the structure of string theory is rich enough to include the standard model in rough outline is an old one, starting with the early constructions of free field constructions,…
I argue that the ten dimensional non--supersymmetric tachyonic superstrings may serve as good starting points for the construction of viable phenomenological vacua. Thus, enlarging the space of possible solutions that may address some of…
A brief discussion is presented assessing the achievements and challenges of string phenomenology: the subfield dedicated to study the potential for string theory to make contact with particle physics and cosmology. Building from the well…
Non-relativistic string theories promise to provide simpler theories of quantum gravity as well as tractable limits of the AdS/CFT correspondence. However, several apparently distinct non-relativistic string theories have been constructed.…
We provide a non-technical introduction to "misaligned supersymmetry", a generic phenomenon in string theory which describes how the arrangement of bosonic and fermionic states at all string energy levels conspires to preserve finite string…
We study the space-time invariances of the bosonic relativistic particle and bosonic relativistic string using general formulations obtained by incorporating the Hamiltonian constraints into the formalism. We point out that massless…
There is evidence that string theory possesses a large discretuum of stable and/or metastable ground states, with zero or four supersymmetries in four dimensions. I discuss critically the nature of this evidence. Assuming this "landscape"…
Macroscopic fundamental and Dirichlet strings have several potential instabilities: breakage, tachyon decays, and confinement by axion domain walls. We investigate the conditions under which metastable strings can exist, and we find that…
We investigate Bianchi type IX ''Mixmaster'' universes within the framework of the low-energy tree-level effective action for string theory, which (when the ''stringy'' 2-form axion potential vanishes) is formally the same as the…
We use open string field theory to study the dynamics of unstable branes in the bosonic string theory, in the background of a generic linear dilaton. We find a simple exact solution describing a dynamical interpolation between the…
Assuming that around the tachyon vacuum the kinetic term of cubic open string field theory is made purely of ghost operators we are led to gauge invariant actions which manifestly implement the absence of open string dynamics around this…
In bosonic closed string field theory the "tachyon potential" is a potential for the tachyon, the dilaton, and an infinite set of massive fields. Earlier computations of the potential did not include the dilaton and the critical point…
Nonrelativistic string theory is described by a sigma model with a relativistic worldsheet and a nonrelativistic target spacetime geometry, that is called string Newton-Cartan geometry. In this paper we obtain string Newton-Cartan geometry…
We review various aspects of de Sitter spacetime in string theory: its status as an effective field theory spacetime solution, its relation to the vacuum energy problem in string theory, its (global) holographic definition in terms of two…
Recent results on the effective non-local dynamics of the tachyon mode of open string field theory (OSFT) show that approximate solutions can be constructed which obey the diffusion equation. We argue that this structure is inherited from…
Amidst all candidates of physics beyond the Standard Model, string theory provides a unique proposal for incorporating gauge and gravitational interactions. In string theory, a four-dimensional theory that unifies quantum mechanics and…
We study a modified bosonic string theory that has a pressureless ``dust'' field on the string worldsheet. The dust is a real scalar field with unit gradient which breaks conformal invariance. Hamiltonian analysis reveals a time…
We show that a tachyon condensate phase replaces the spacelike singularity in certain cosmological and black hole spacetimes in string theory. We analyze explicitly a set of examples with flat spatial slices in various dimensions which have…
We critically assess the twin prospects of describing the observed universe in string theory, and using cosmological experiments to probe string theory. For the purposes of this short review, we focus on the limitations imposed by our…