Related papers: Finiteness Theorems and Counting Conjectures for t…
The Swampland Distance Conjecture states that at infinite distance in the scalar moduli space an infinite tower of particles become exponentially massless. We study this issue in the context of 4d type IIA and type IIB Calabi-Yau…
The possible existence of (meta-) stable de Sitter vacua in string theory is of fundamental importance. So far, there are no fully stable solutions where all effects are under perturbative control. In this paper we investigate the presence…
The axion Weak Gravity Conjecture implies that when parametrically increasing the axion decay constants, instanton corrections become increasingly important. We provide strong evidence for the validity of this conjecture by studying the…
In the recent years a lot of attention is focused on unconventional string compactifications. A variety of different but related frameworks was developed in order to address issues such as duality invariance, non-geometry and…
The landscape of string vacua is very large, but generally expected to be finite in size. Enumerating the number and properties of the vacua is an important task for both the landscape and the swampland, in part to gain a deeper…
We present the study of type II A flux vacua and their M-theory duals for compactification on a class of Calabi-Yau orientifolds. The Kaehler potential is derived from toroidal compactifications and the superpotential contains a…
This is a review. Comments are welcome. The observation that the structure of string theory is rich enough to include the standard model in rough outline is an old one, starting with the early constructions of free field constructions,…
This paper, in a sense, completes a series of three papers. In the previous two hep-th/0404013, hep-th/0410293, we have explored the possibility of refining the K-theory partition function in type II string theories using elliptic…
We show that the recent world-sheet analysis of the quantum fluctuations of a short flux tube in type II string theory leads to a simple and precise description of a pair of stuck D0branes in an orientifold compactification of the type I'…
We study the vacuum structure of compactifications of type II string theories on orientifolds with SU(3)xSU(3) structure. We argue that generalised geometry enables us to treat these non-geometric compactifications using a supergravity…
We discuss the vacuum structure of type IIA/B Calabi-Yau string compactifications to four dimensions in the presence of n-form H-fluxes. These will lift the vacuum degeneracy in the Calabi-Yau moduli space, and for generic points in the…
We investigate D=4, N=1 F theory models realized by type IIB string compactification on toric threefolds. Massless spectra, gauge symmetries, phase transitions associated with divisor contractions and flops, and non-perturbative…
A new method for constructing flows between distinct Landau-Ginzburg theories at fixed central charge is presented. The essential ingredient of the construction is an enlarged moduli space obtained by adding theories with zero central…
We study some aspects of fine tuning in inflationary scenarios within string theory flux compactifications and, in particular, in models of accidental inflation. We investigate the possibility that the apparent fine-tuning of the low energy…
Thus far, the known wormholes in string theory connecting disjoint boundaries represented by finite volume quotients of hyperbolic spaces leak: they are non-perturbatively unstable towards brane-anti-brane nucleation in the flux backgrounds…
We review the prospect of obtaining tree-level de Sitter (dS) vacua and slow-roll inflation models in string compactifications. Restricting ourselves to the closed string sector and assuming the absence of NSNS-sources, we classify the…
We revisit and extend the correspondence between black holes, domain walls and fluxes in type IIA compactifications. We argue that these three systems can be described by the same supergravity effective action, modulo proper identifications…
We attempt an estimate for the distribution of the tensor mode fraction $r$ over the landscape of vacua in string theory. The dynamics of eternal inflation and quantum tunneling lead to a kind of democracy on the landscape, providing no…
Recent developments in string theory have reinforced the notion that the space of stable supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric string vacua fills out a ``landscape'' whose features are largely unknown. It is then hoped that progress in…
These lecture notes are devoted to formal and phenomenological aspects of F-theory. We begin with a pedagogical introduction to the general concepts of F-theory, covering classic topics such as the connection to Type IIB orientifolds, the…