Related papers: The String Landscape, the Swampland, and the Missi…
In these lecture notes we discuss a body of work in which Morse theory is used to construct various homology and cohomology operations. In the classical setting of algebraic topology this is done by constructing a moduli space of graph…
The past few years have witnessed a remarkable crossover of string theoretical ideas from the abstract world of geometrical forms to the concrete experimental realm of condensed matter physics. The basis for this --- variously known as…
In the context of studying string backgrounds, much work has been devoted to the question of how similar a general quantum field theory (specifically, a two-dimensional superconformal theory) is to a sigma model. Put differently, one would…
String geometry theory is a candidate of the non-perturbative formulation of string theory. In order to determine the string vacuum, we need to clarify how string backgrounds are described in string geometry theory. In this paper, we show…
String theory is the leading contemporary framework to explore the synthesis of quantum mechanics with gravity. String phenomenology aims to study string theory while maintaining contact with observational data. The fermionic $Z_2\times…
In quantum field theory, an orbifold is a way to obtain a new theory from an old one by gauging a finite global symmetry. This definition of orbifold does not make sense for quantum gravity theories, that admit (conjecturally) no global…
The Swampland program aims to distinguish effective theories which can be completed into quantum gravity in the ultraviolet from those which cannot. This article forms an introduction to the field, assuming only a knowledge of quantum field…
String theory, as a theory containing quantum gravity, is usually thought to require more dimensions of spacetime than the usual 3+1. Here I argue on physical grounds that needing extra dimensions for strings may well be an artefact of…
This review provides an introduction to non-geometric backgrounds in string theory. Starting from a discussion of T-duality, geometric and non-geometric torus-fibrations are reviewed, generalised geometry and its relation to non-geometric…
It is argued that quantum gravity has an interpretation as a topological field theory provided a certain constraint from the path intergral measure is respected. The constraint forces us to couple gauge and matter fields to gravity for…
In this note we present a brief overview of connections between Chern-Simons theory and topological strings. A prominent role in this link has been played by large N dualities and holography. We demystify this by explaining why the Kahler…
We apply the topological quantization method to some gravitational fields which can be represented as generalized harmonic maps. This representation extends the well-known concept of harmonic maps and allows us to describe some solutions to…
This chapter gives an overview of the quantum aspects of black holes, focusing on the black hole information problem, the counting of black hole entropy in string theory, and the emergence of spacetime in holography. It is aimed at a broad…
The U-dualities of maximally supersymmetric supergravity theories lead to celebrated non-perturbative constraints on the structure of quantum gravity. They can also lead to the presence of global symmetries since manifolds equipped with…
String theory avoids the ultraviolet infinities that arise in trying to quantize gravity. It is also more predictive than conventional quantum field theory, one aspect of this being the way that it contributed to the emergence of the…
We provide a short overview of recent progress made in our understanding of the dark sector based on the Swampland program which in turn is rooted in lessons from string theory. We explain how the existence of one extra mesoscopic dimension…
We examine various aspects of the conjectured duality between warped AdS$_5$ geometries with boundary branes and strongly coupled (broken) conformal field theories coupled to dynamical gravity. We also examine compactifications with 5-d…
According to the holography principle (due to G.`t Hooft, L. Susskind, J. Maldacena, et al.), quantum gravity and string theory on certain manifolds with boundary can be studied in terms of a conformal field theory on the boundary. Only a…
In this paper, we examine the analogy between topological string theory and equivariant cohomology. We also show that the equivariant cohomology of a topological conformal field theory carries a certain algebraic structure, which we call a…
A certain topological field theory is shown to be equivalent to the compactified c=1 string. This theory is described in both Kazama-Suzuki coset and Landau-Ginzburg formulations. The genus-g partition function and genus-0 multi-tachyon…