Related papers: String Defects, Supersymmetry and the Swampland
Gravity duals for little string theories --- which give rise to four-dimensional theories that undergo permanent confinement in the infrared --- have not been studied in great detail. We address this question in the framework of heterotic…
The space of four dimensional string and $M$ theory vacua with non-Abelian gauge symmetry, chiral fermions and unbroken supersymmetry beyond the electroweak scale appears to be a disconnected space whose different components represent…
These lectures present some topics of string phenomenology and contain two parts. In the first part, I review the possibility of lowering the string scale in the TeV region, that provides a theoretical framework for solving the mass…
We revisit the symmetries of massless two-dimensional adjoint QCD with gauge group $SU(N)$. The dynamics is not sufficiently constrained by the ordinary symmetries and anomalies. Here we show that the theory in fact admits $\sim 2^{2N}$…
"Brane supersymmetry breaking" occurs in String Theory when the only available combinations of D-branes and orientifolds are not mutually BPS and yet do not introduce tree-level tachyon instabilities. It is characterized by the emergence of…
A new set of boundary conditions for string propagators is proposed in this paper. The boundary conditions are parametrized by a complex number $\lambda$. Under these new boundary conditions, the left-moving and right-moving modes are…
In $SU(N)$ Yang-Mills theory without matter, there exist stable long electric fluxtube strings which carry a 1-form symmetry charge. Over the past decade or so, there has been increasing evidence from lattice calculations that the…
I investigate two discrete models of random geometries, namely simplicial quantum gravity and quantum string theory. In four-dimensional simplicial quantum gravity, I show that the addition of matter gauge fields to the model is capable of…
We argue that in large classes of string compactifications with a MSSM-like structure substantial flavor violating SUSY-breaking soft terms are generically induced. We specify to the case of flavor dependent soft-terms in type IIB/F-theory…
We show the existence of a supersymmetry breaking mechanism in string theory, where N=4 supersymmetry is broken spontaneously to N=2 and N=1 with moduli dependent gravitino masses. The spectrum of the spontaneously broken theory with lower…
We present a review of supersymmetry, supergravity, and the non-perturbative dynamics of gauge theories, tracing a path from the supersymmetry algebra to moduli stabilisation and de~Sitter vacua in string theory. Representations of the…
In some string theories, e.g. SO(32) heterotic string theory on Calabi-Yau manifolds, a massless field with a tree level potential can acquire a tachyonic mass at the one loop level, forcing us to quantize the theory around a new background…
We construct four dimensional intersecting D6-brane models that have locally the spectrum of the N=1 Supersymmetric Standard Model. All open {\em visible} string sectors share the same N=1 supersymmetry. As expected in these supersymmetric…
This report presents some studies of the gauge/string theory correspondence, a deep relation that is possible to establish between quantum field theories with local gauge symmetry and superstring theories including gravity. In its original…
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…
Exploiting the gauge/gravity correspondence we find the spectrum of hadronic-like bound states of adjoint particles with a large global charge in several confining theories. In particular, we consider an embedding of four-dimensional N=1…
The tachyon-free nonsupersymmetric string theories in ten dimensions have dilaton tadpoles which forbid a Minkowski vacuum. We determine the maximally symmetric backgrounds for the $USp(32)$ Type I string and the $SO(16)\times SO(16)$…
The Swampland Program aims to address the question, "when does an effective field theory model of quantum gravity have an ultraviolet complete embedding in string theory?", and can be regarded as a bottom-up approach to investigations of…
Swampland criteria like the Weak Gravity Conjecture should not only apply to particles, but also to other lower-codimension charged objects in 4d EFTs like strings and membranes. However, the description of the latter is in general subtle…
Compactified string theories give rise to discrete symmetries which are essential if they are to provide a realistic low energy theory. We find that in a class of four dimensional string theories these symmetries are constrained by similar…