Related papers: The dangerous irrelevance of string theory
In this brief, and by no means complete, review I discuss situations in string theory, in which Lorentz Invariance Violation may occur in a way consistent with world-sheet conformal invariance, thereby leading to acceptable, in principle,…
Cosmic inflation is the cornerstone of modern cosmology. In particular, following the Planck mission reports presented in 2015 regarding cosmic microwave background (CMB), there is an increasing interest in searching for inflaton candidates…
I discuss various aspects of background independence in the context of string theory, for which so far we have no manifestly background independent formulation. After reviewing the role of background independence in classical Einstein…
D-branes are fundamental in all scenarios where there are large extra dimensions and the string scale is much smaller than the four-dimensional Planck mass. We show that this current picture leads to a new approach to string cosmology where…
The topic of cosmic strings provides a bridge between the physics of the very small and the very large. They are predicted by some unified theories of particle interactions. If they exist, they may help to explain some of the largest-scale…
We motivate a relation between dark energy and the scale of new physics in weakly coupled string theory. This mixing between infrared and ultraviolet physics leads to a unique corner for real-world phenomenology: barring fine-tunings, we…
These lectures cover the theoretical structure and phenomenology of some basic mechanisms for inflation. A full treatment of the problem requires `ultraviolet completion' because of the sensitivity of inflation to quantum gravity effects,…
The mystery of the cosmological constant is probably the most pressing obstacle to significantly improving the models of elementary particle physics derived from string theory. The problem arises because in the standard framework of low…
As of today there exist consistent, gauge-invariant string field theories describing all string theories: bosonic open and closed strings, open superstrings, heterotic strings and type II strings. The construction of these theories require…
An interpretation of spacelike singularities in string theory uses target space duality to relate the collapsing Schwarzschild geometry near the singularity to an inflationary cosmology in dual variables. An appealing picture thus results…
We consider brane-world scenarios embedded into string theory. We find that the D-brane backreaction induces a large increase in the open string's proper length. Consequently the stringy nature of elementary particles can be detected at…
In recent work, it was shown that velocity-dependent forces between moving strings or branes lead to an accelerating expanding universe without assuming the existence of a cosmological constant. Here we show that the repulsive…
We conjecture a general upper bound on the strength of gravity relative to gauge forces in quantum gravity. This implies, in particular, that in a four-dimensional theory with gravity and a U(1) gauge field with gauge coupling g, there is a…
We discuss dark energy, dark matter and the hierarchy problem in the context of a general non-commutative formulation of string theory. In this framework dark energy is generated by the dynamical geometry of the dual spacetime while dark…
We discuss an aspect of string theory which has been tackled from many different perspectives, but incompletely: the role of nonlocality in the theory and its relation to the geometric shape of the string. In particular, we will describe in…
One of the most interesting predictions of string-inspired cosmological models is the presence of a stochastic background of relic gravitational waves in the frequency band accessible to Earth-based detectors. Here we consider a ``minimal''…
We demonstrate a first-principle analysis of the string theory landscapes in the framework of non-critical string/matrix models. In particular, we discuss non-perturbative instability, decay rate and the true vacuum of perturbative string…
This essay presents a critical evaluation of the concepts of string theory and its impact on particle physics. The point of departure is a historical review of four decades of string theory within the broader context of six decades of…
Recently, it has been shown in Ref.[1] that the string thermodynamic fluctuation may lead to a scale invariant spectrum of scalar metric perturbation. However, its realization is still in study. In this note we suppose that the correlation…
It has recently been realised that strings with time-dependent tensions exhibit interesting dynamics; in particular, when the tension decreases loops of string can grow and possibly percolate. We extend previous analytic studies of strings…