Related papers: Supersymmetry Breaking by Fluxes
The effect of fluxes on open string moduli is studied by analyzing the constraints imposed by supersymmetry on D-branes in type IIB flux backgrounds. We show that generically the conditions of supersymmetry cannot be maintained when moving…
In general quantum systems there are two kinds of spacetime modes, those that fluctuate and those that do not. Fluctuating modes have normalizable wavefunctions. In the context of 2D gravity and ``non-critical'' string theory these are…
The late-time behavior of our universe is one of accelerated expansion, or that of a de Sitter space, and therefore motivates us to look for time-dependent backgrounds. Finding such backgrounds in string theory has always been a challenging…
We analyse the world-volume theory of multiple Kaluza-Klein monopoles in string and M-theory by identifying the appropriate zero modes of various fields. The results are consistent with supersymmetry, and all conjectured duality symmetries.…
We review recent work in which compactifications of string and M theory are constructed in which all scalar fields (moduli) are massive, and supersymmetry is broken with a small positive cosmological constant, features needed to reproduce…
We argue that the study of the statistics of the landscape of string vacua provides the first potentially predictive -- and also falsifiable -- framework for string theory. The question of whether the theory does or does not predict low…
A consistent theory of supersymmetry breaking must have a hidden sector, an observable sector, and must be embedded in a locally supersymmetric theory which arises from string theory. For phenomenological reasons it must also transmit…
We discuss the problem of introducing background spacetimes of the de Sitter type (quintessential backgrounds) in the context of fundamental theories involving supersymmetry. The role of a model presented in 1984, showing that these…
On-shell superspace techniques are used to quantify R-symmetry violation in type IIB superstring theory amplitudes in a flat background in ten dimensions. This shows the existence of a particularly simple class of non-vanishing amplitudes…
With respect to the question of supersymmetry breaking, there are three branches of the flux landscape. On one of these, if one requires small cosmological constant, supersymmetry breaking is predominantly at the fundamental scale; on…
Studying a quantum field theory involves a choice of space-time manifold and a choice of background for any global symmetries of the theory. We argue that many more choices are possible when specifying the background. In the context of…
We consider one of the simplest time-dependent backgrounds in M-theory, describing the shrinking away of the M-theory dimension with the other spatial dimensions static. As the M-theory dimension becomes small, the situation becomes…
Recent work has made clear that we have far more control over the dynamics of supersymmetric than non-supersymmetric theories. Here, I discuss some issues in dynamical supersymmetry breaking both in ordinary field theory and in string…
Effective field theories with (large) extra dimensions are studied within a physical regularization scheme provided by string theory. Explicit string calculations then allow us to consistently analyze the ultraviolet sensitivity of…
We construct Matrix Membrane theory in pp wave backgrounds that have a null linear dilaton in Type IIB string theory. Such backgrounds can serve as toy models of big bang cosmologies. At late times only abelian degrees of freedom survive,…
We use string duality to describe instanton induced spontaneous supersymmetry breaking in string compactifications with additional background fields. Dynamical supersymmetry breaking by space-time instantons in the heterotic string theory…
In a generic setting of Wess-Zumino models, we prove that the existence of a supersymmetric vacuum with a vanishing superpotential can be a consequence of a continuous or discrete R-symmetry when invariant fields are not less than fields…
The physical motivations and the basic construction rules for Type I strings and M-theory compactifications are reviewed in light of the recent developments. The first part contains the basic theoretical ingredients needed for building…
We construct zero-temperature solutions of supergravity theories in five and four dimensions which interpolate between two copies of anti-de Sitter space, one of which preserves an abelian gauge symmetry while the other breaks it. These…
This Ph.D. thesis investigates effective field and string theories in which supersymmetry is realized and broken in various ways. Chapter 1 addresses effective theories with nonlinearly realized supersymmetry, constructed using the…