Related papers: Lectures on the string landscape and the Swampland
These lecture notes give an overview of recent results in geometric Langlands correspondence which may yield applications to quantum field theory. We start with a motivated introduction to the Langlands Program, including its geometric…
Emphasis is on 2d target space (c=1 coupled to gravity). Contents: 0. Introduction, Overview, and Purpose 1. Loops and States in Conformal Field Theory 2. 2D Euclidean Quantum Gravity I: Path Integral Approach 3. Brief Review of the…
These lecture notes, based on the course given at IPhT in November/December 2023, provide a pedagogical introduction to the study of strings in AdS$_3$ backgrounds supported by NSNS flux from the worldsheet perspective, including a number…
We review recent developments in the field of string cosmology with particular emphasis on open problems having to do mainly with geometric asymptotics and singularities. We discuss outstanding issues in a variety of currently popular…
By combining swampland conjectures with observational data, it was recently suggested that the cosmological hierarchy problem (i.e. the smallness of the dark energy in Planck units) could be understood as an asymptotic limit in field space,…
It has been claimed that the string landscape predicts an open universe, with negative curvature. The prediction is a consequence of a large number of metastable string vacua, and the properties of the Coleman--De Luccia instanton which…
An important unsolved problem that affects practically all attempts to connect string theory to cosmology and phenomenology is how to distinguish effective field theories belonging to the string landscape from those that are not consistent…
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…
String theory in two-dimensional spacetime illuminates two main threads of recent development in string theory: (1) Open/closed string duality, and (2) Tachyon condensation. In two dimensions, many aspects of these phenomena can be explored…
The organising principles underlying the structure of phenomenologically viable string vacua can be accessed by sampling such vacua. In many cases this is prohibited by the computational cost of standard sampling methods in the high…
The ``Swampland Program'' aims to discriminate consistent-looking effective field theories that do not admit a UV completion in quantum gravity from those that do. While most often developed under the umbrella of string theory, several…
The recent progress in the understanding of the landscape of string theory vacua hints that the hierarchy problem might be the problem of a super-selection rule. The attractor mechanism gives a possibility to explain the choice of a vacuum.…
Many problems in physics, material sciences, chemistry and biology can be abstractly formulated as a system that navigates over a complex energy landscape of high or infinite dimensions. Well-known examples include phase transitions of…
These lectures aim to provide a global picture of the spaces of consistent quantum supergravity theories and string vacua in higher dimensions. The lectures focus on theories in the even dimensions 10, 8, and 6. Supersymmetry, along with…
The suggestion that there exist causally disconnected universes or sub-universes to explain the values of physical parameters such as the cosmological constant is discussed. A statistical model of the string landscape/topography is…
It seems likely that string theory has a landscape of vacua that includes very many metastable de Sitter spaces. However, as emphasized by Banks, Dine and Gorbatov, no current framework exists for examining these metastable vacua in string…
In this lecture we review some of the recent developments in string theory on an introductory and qualitative level. In particular we focus on S-T-U dualities of toroidally compactified ten-dimensional string theories and outline the…
String theoretical ideas might be relevant for particle physics model building. Ideally one would hope to find a unified theory of all fundamental interactions. There are only few consistent string theories in D=10 or 11 space-time…
This paper is a synthesis of talks I gave at the Cargese Workshop in June 2004 and the Munich Conference on Superstring Vacua in November 2004. I present arguments which show that the landscape of string theory is not a well established…
These lectures give a detailed introduction to constructing and analyzing string vacua suitable for phenomenological model building, with particular emphasis on F-theory flux vacua. Topics include (1) general challenges and overview of some…