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We briefly review attempts to construct string theories that yield the standard model, concentrating on models with a geometric interpretation. Calabi-Yau compactifications are discussed in the context of both the weakly coupled heterotic…
Superunification underwent a major paradigm shift in 1984 when eleven-dimensional supergravity was knocked off its pedestal by ten-dimensional superstrings. This last year has witnessed a new shift of equal proportions: perturbative…
We describe a class of time-dependent solutions in string- or M-theory that are exact with respect to alpha-prime and curvature corrections and interpolate in physical space between regions in which the low energy physics is…
We provide further motivation for the string lamppost principle in 9d supergravities. Using a blend of ideas which includes Swampland conjectures, finiteness of black hole entropy, and classification of SCFTs, we show that infinite distance…
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 describe a new first-order formulation of D=11 supergravity which shows that that theory can be understood to arise from a certain topological field theory by the imposition of a set of local constraints on the fields, plus a lagrange…
The nature of M-theory on K3 X I, where I is a line interval, is considered, with a view towards formulating a `matrix theory' representation of that situation. Various limits of this compactification of M-theory yield a number of well…
We show that N=8 spontaneously broken supergravity in four dimensions obtained by Scherk-Schwarz generalized dimensional reduction can be obtained from a pure four dimensional perspective by gauging a suitable electric subgroup of E_{7,7}.…
We explore the Emergence Proposal for the moduli metric and the gauge couplings in a concrete model with 7 saxionic and 7 axionic moduli fields, namely the compactification of the type IIA superstring on a 6-dimensional toroidal orbifold.…
Duality transformations involving compactifications on timelike as well as spacelike circles link M-theory, the 10+1-dimensional strong coupling limit of IIA string theory, to other 11-dimensional theories in signatures 9+2 and 6+5 and to…
We consider the compactification of the dual form of $N=1$ $D=10$ supergravity on a six-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifold. An $N=1$ off-shell supergravity effective Lagrangian in four dimensions can be constructed in a dual version of the…
We delineate a procedure to classify 6d N=(1,0) gauge theories composed, in part, of a semi-simple gauge group and hypermultiplets. We classify these theories by requiring that they satisfy some consistency conditions. The primary…
We consider discrete K-theory tadpole cancellation conditions in type IIB orientifolds with magnetised 7-branes. Cancellation of K-theory charge constrains the choices of world-volume magnetic fluxes on the latter. We describe the…
We describe three analytic classes of infinitely many AdS_d supersymmetric solutions of massive IIA supergravity, for d = 7, 5, 4. The three classes are related by simple universal maps. For example, the AdS_7 x M_3 solutions (where M_3 is…
We analyze the anomaly constraints on 6D supergravity theories with a single abelian U(1) gauge factor. For theories with charges restricted to $q = \pm1, \pm2$ and no tensor multiplets, anomaly-free models match those models that can be…
We describe a class of 4d N=1 compactifications of the $SO(32)$ heterotic/type I string theory which are destabilized by nonperturbatively generated superpotentials. In the type I description, the destabilizing superpotential is generated…
In Kaluza-Klein compactifications, some symmetries of the higher dimensional theory are preserved in lower dimensions, others are broken, and occasionally, there are symmetry enhancements. The symmetries that are enhanced by toroidal…
We investigate compactifications with duality twists and their relation to orbifolds and compactifications with fluxes. Inequivalent compactifications are classified by conjugacy classes of the U-duality group and result in gauged…
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…
(3+1)D topological phases of matter can host a broad class of non-trivial topological defects of codimension-1, 2, and 3, of which the well-known point charges and flux loops are special cases. The complete algebraic structure of these…