Related papers: Singular Geometry and Higgs Bundles in String Theo…
String theories should reduce to ordinary four-dimensional field theories at low energies. Yet the formulation of the two are so different that such a connection, if it exists, is not immediately obvious. With the Schwinger proper-time…
These notes have been prepared as reading material for the mini-course given by the author at the "2019 Graduate Summer School" at Park City Mathematics Institute - Institute for Advanced Study. We begin by introducing Higgs bundles and…
In gauge theory, Higgs fields are responsible for spontaneous symmetry breaking. In classical gauge theory on a principal bundle P, a symmetry breaking is defined as the reduction of a structure group of this principal bundle to a subgroup…
String phenomenology is the branch of string theory concerned with making contact with particle physics. The original models involved compactifying ten-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory on an internal Calabi-Yau three-fold. In…
This is the extended abstract of the talk given at the workshop "Geometry and physics of Higgs bundles", held at the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach in May 2019.
String compactifications with T-duality twists are revisited and the gauge algebra of the dimensionally reduced theories calculated. These reductions can be viewed as string theory on T-fold backgrounds, and can be formulated in a `doubled…
The Langlands Program was launched in the late 60s with the goal of relating Galois representations and automorphic forms. In recent years a geometric version has been developed which leads to a mysterious duality between certain categories…
Ideas about a duality between gauge fields and strings have been around for many decades. During the last ten years, these ideas have taken a much more concrete mathematical form. String descriptions of the strongly coupled dynamics of…
In this article we provide a more detailed account of the geometry and topology of the composite bundle formalism introduced by Tresguerres in Phys. Rev. D 66 (2002) 064025 [1] to accommodate gravitation as a gauge theory. In the first half…
A pedagogical but concise overview of fiber bundles and their connections is provided, in the context of gauge theories in physics. The emphasis is on defining and visualizing concepts and relationships between them, as well as listing…
Higgs bundles appeared a few decades ago as solutions to certain equations from physics and have attracted much attention in geometry as well as other areas of mathematics and physics. Here, we take a very informal stroll through some…
The geometric Langlands correspondence was described some years ago in terms of $S$-duality of $\N=4$ super Yang-Mills theory. Some additional matters relevant to this story are described here. The main goal is to explain directly why an…
This is a very brief survey of some results in the geometry of string duality delivered at a lecture given at ICM 1998, Berlin. String Duality is the statement that one kind of string theory compactified on one space is equivalent in some…
We consider classical gauge theory on a principal bundle P->X in a case of spontaneous symmetry breaking characterized by the reduction of a structure group G of P->X to its closed subgroup H. This reduction is ensured by the existence of…
Geometric structures on manifolds became popular when Thurston used them in his work on the geometrization conjecture. They were studied by many people and they play an important role in higher Teichm\"uller theory. Geometric structures on…
String theory is a quantum theory that reproduces the results of General Relativity at long distances but is completely different at short distances. Mathematically, string theory is based on a very new -- and little understood -- framework…
Higgs bundles are a central tool used to study a range of intersecting brane systems in string compactifications. Solutions to the internal gauge theory equations of motion for the corresponding worldvolume theories of branes give rise to…
Over the last few years, string theory has changed profoundly. Most importantly, novel duality relations have emerged which involve gauge theories of brane excitations on one side and various closed string backgrounds on the other. In this…
We construct intersecting D-brane configurations that encode the gauge groups and field content of dual N=4 supersymmetric gauge theories in three dimensions. The duality which exchanges the Coulomb and Higgs branches and the…
I review certain aspects of Hanany-Witten setups and other approaches used to embed (and solve) gauge theories in string theory. Applications covered include dualities in 4 and 3 dimensions, fixed points in 6 dimensions, phase transitions…