Related papers: On the weak gravity conjecture in string theory wi…
Positivity bounds coming from consistency of UV scattering amplitudes are in general insufficient to prove the weak gravity conjecture for theories beyond Einstein-Maxwell. Additional ingredients about the UV may be necessary to exclude…
A new approach to vacuum decay in quantum field theory, based on a simple variational formulation in field space using a tunneling potential, is ideally suited to study the effects of gravity on such decays. The method allows to prove in…
In these lectures, two different aspects of brane world scenarios in 5d gravity or string theory are discussed. In the first two lectures, work on how warped compactifications of 5d gravity theories can change the guise of the hierarchy…
Twisted supergravity is supergravity in a background where the bosonic ghost field takes a non-zero value. This is the supergravity counterpart of the familiar concept of twisting supersymmetric field theories. In this paper, we give…
In brane world scenarios with a bulk scalar field between two branes it is known that 4-dimensional Einstein gravity is restored at low energies on either brane. By using a gauge-invariant gravitational and scalar perturbation formalism we…
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 study the transmission of supersymmetry breaking via gravitational interactions in a five-dimensional brane-world compactified on $S^1/Z_2$. We assume that chiral matter and gauge fields are confined at the orbifold fixed points, where…
Four dimensional supergravities may be the right framework to describe particle physics at low energies. Its connection to the underlying string theory can be implemented through higher dimensional supergravities which bear special…
We study ultraviolet cutoffs associated with the Weak Gravity Conjecture (WGC) and Sublattice Weak Gravity Conjecture (sLWGC). There is a magnetic WGC cutoff at the energy scale $e G_N^{-1/2}$ with an associated sLWGC tower of charged…
We study the possibility of obtaining noncommutative gravity dynamics from string theory in the Seiberg-Witten limit. We find that the resulting low-energy theory contains more interaction terms than those proposed in noncommutative…
We show that one can find de Sitter critical points (saddle points) in models of flux compactification of Type IIB String Theory without any uplifting terms and in the presence of several moduli. We demonstrate this by giving explicit…
The modification to four--dimensional Einstein gravity at low energy in two brane models is investigated within supergravity in singular spaces. Using perturbation theory around a static BPS background, we study the effective…
We study string loop corrections to the gravity kinetic terms in type IIB compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds or their orbifold limits, in the presence of $D7$-branes and orientifold planes. We show that they exhibit in general a…
Vacuum compactifications may suffer from instabilities under small perturbations or tunnel effects; both are difficult to analyze. In this paper we consider the issue from a higher-dimensional perspective. We first look at how stability…
In type IIB string theory, we consider fractional D3-branes in the orbifold background dual to four-dimensional N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory. We find the gravitational dual description of the generation of a non-trivial field theory…
Generating an effective theory of lower-dimensional gravity on a submanifold within an original higher-dimensional theory can be achieved even if the reduction space is non-compact. Localisation of gravity on such a lower-dimensional…
In global supersymmetric Wess-Zumino models with minimal K\"ahler potentials, F-type supersymmetry breaking always yields instability or continuous degeneracy of non-supersymmetric vacua. As a generalization of the original O'Raifeartaigh's…
We explore how the IR pathologies of noncommutative field theory are resolved when the theory is realized as open strings in background B-fields: essentially, since the IR singularities are induced by UV/IR mixing, string theory brings them…
Gauge/gravity duality is the conjecture that string theories have dual descriptions as gauge theories. Weakly-coupled gravity is dual to strongly-coupled gauge theories, ideal for lattice calculations. I will show precision lattice…
We consider some questions of naturalness which arise when one considers conventional field theories in the presence of gravitation: the problem of global symmetries, the strong CP problem, and the cosmological constant problem. Using…