Related papers: 4D dS vacua from AdS vacua of type IIB string theo…
It is not understood whether scale-separated AdS vacua in string theory admit a holographic dual. A well-known class of such vacua is provided by the DGKT solutions of massive type IIA string theory, where scale separation arises from large…
We derive conditions for the existence of four-dimensional \N=1 supersymmetric flux vacua of massive type IIA string theory with general supergravity fluxes turned on. For an SU(3) singlet Killing spinor, we show that such flux vacua exist…
The search for classically stable Type IIA de-Sitter vacua typically starts with an ansatz that gives Anti-de-Sitter supersymmetric vacua and then raises the cosmological constant by modifying the compactification. As one raises the…
In this contribution we review the ideas and results presented in the articles arXiv:2002.01764 and arXiv:2110.08276 where the decay of AdS vacua into bubbles of nothing is studied. We firstly consider AdS vacua in General Relativity with a…
AdS flux vacua with a parametric separation between the AdS and KK scales have been conjectured to be in the Swampland. We study flux compactifications of massive IIA supergravity with O6 planes which are claimed to allow moduli-stabilised…
In this paper we construct a stringy embedding of the dark bubble model of an expanding 4D cosmology with the help of branes rotating in extra dimensions. The universe rides a bubble which has nucleated in an unstable higher dimensional…
We show that $4$-dimensional Robertson-Walker spacetimes can be constructed for which all of the beta functions vanish to leading order, yielding consistent string theory without extra dimensions. We find that there is a unique static…
A radiatively stable de Sitter spacetime is constructed by considering an intrinsically non-commutative and generalized-geometric formulation of string theory, which is related to a family of F-theory models endowed with non-trivial…
Supercritical string theories in D>10 dimensions with no moduli are described, generalizing the asymmetric orientifold construction of one of the authors. By taking the number of dimensions to be large and turning on fluxes, dilaton…
It is shown that a simple model for 4-dimensional quantum gravity based on a 3-dimensional generalization of anyon superconductivity can be regarded as a discrete form of Polyakov's string theory. This suggests that there is a universal…
Field theories on anti-de Sitter (AdS) space can be studied by realizing them as low-energy limits of AdS vacua of string/M theory. In an appropriate limit, the field theories decouple from the rest of string/M theory. Since these vacua are…
The existence of de-Sitter solutions and their stability within string theory became, in recent years, one of the central research questions within the string theory community. The so-called de-Sitter conjecture states that the de-Sitter…
This talk begins with some history and basic facts about string theory and its connections with strong interactions. Comparisons of stacks of Dirichlet branes with curved backgrounds produced by them are used to motivate the AdS/CFT…
We consider massive type IIA compactifications down to 4 dimensions in presence of O6 planes and D6 branes parallel to them, in order to preserve half-maximal supersymmetry in 4D. The dynamics of open strings living on the spacetime filling…
Identifying string theory vacua with desired physical properties at low energies requires searching through high-dimensional solution spaces - collectively referred to as the string landscape. We highlight that this search problem is…
We perform string quantization in anti de Sitter (AdS) spacetime. The string motion is stable, oscillatory in time with real frequencies $\omega_n= \sqrt{n^2+m^2\alpha'^2H^2}$ and the string size and energy are bounded. The string…
String theory requires additional degrees of freedom to maintain world-sheet reparameterisation invariance at the quantum level. These are often interpreted as extra dimensions, beyond the 4 space-time. I discuss a class of quasi-realistic…
De Sitter solutions have been recently conjectured to be incompatible with quantum gravity. In this paper we critically assess the progress and challenges of different mechanisms to obtain de Sitter vacua in string compactifications and…
We show that the anomalies of the Virasoro algebra are due to the asymmetric behavior of raising and lowering operators with respect to the ground state of the string. With the adoption of a symmetric vacuum we obtain a non-anomalous theory…
The persistent challenge of creating stable de Sitter vacua within string theory undermines the observational validity of the $\Lambda$ cold dark matter (CDM) model. This difficulty suggests that the concordance model of cosmology,…