Related papers: Emergent potentials and non-perturbative open topo…
We describe the type IIA physical realization of the unoriented topological string introduced by Walcher, describe its M-theory lift, and show that it allows to compute the open and unoriented topological amplitude in terms of one-loop…
We consider $\mathbb{Z}_N$ orbifolds of Type-II compactifications to four and six dimensions on several Calabi-Yau manifolds in the orbifold limit with the aim to compute the entanglement entropy. The spectrum can contain tachyons in the…
We invoke probe brane arguments to classify the asymptotic behavior of general five-dimensional supergravity theories with eight supercharges near infinite distance boundaries of the vector multiplet moduli space. Imposing consistency of…
6-dimensional superconformal field theories are exotic and fascinating. They emerge from compactifications of F-theory on Calabi-Yau elliptic fibrations, which grants them a rich array of dualities with various other formulations of string…
In this talk I summarize several recent results concerning the four-dimensional effective supergravity obtained using a Calabi-Yau compactification of the $E_8\times E_8$ heterotic string from M-theory. A simple macroscopic study is…
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,…
Important illustration to the principle ``partition functions in string theory are $\tau$-functions of integrable equations'' is the fact that the (dual) partition functions of $4d$ $\mathcal{N}=2$ gauge theories solve Painlev\'e equations.…
Extracting reliable low-energy information from string compactifications notoriously requires a detailed understanding of the UV sensitivity of the corresponding effective field theories. Despite past efforts in computing perturbative…
We study a class of compactifications of M-theory to three dimensions that preserve N=2 supersymmetry and which have the defining feature that a probe space-time filling M2 brane feels a non-trivial potential on the internal manifold. Using…
We investigate the dynamics of space-time filling five-branes wrapped on curves in heterotic and orientifold Calabi-Yau compactifications. We first study the leading N=1 scalar potential on the infinite deformation space of the brane-curve…
In this note, we study D-brane instantons which intersect N=1 supersymmetric configurations of space-filling D-branes in general Calabi-Yau compactifications of type IIB string theory. Our focus is on rigid ``stringy instantons'' -- those…
We propose a new family of matrix models whose 1/N expansion captures the all-genus topological string on toric Calabi-Yau threefolds. These matrix models are constructed from the trace class operators appearing in the quantization of the…
We embed the large N Chern-Simons/topological string duality in ordinary superstrings. This corresponds to a large $N$ duality between generalized gauge systems with N=1 supersymmetry in 4 dimensions and superstrings propagating on…
We obtain exact results in \alpha' for open and closed A-model topological string amplitudes on a large class of toric Calabi-Yau threefolds by using their correspondence with five dimensional gauge theories. The toric Calabi-Yau's that we…
We study the effective low energy supergravity of the strongly coupled heterotic string compactified on a Calabi-Yau 3-fold with generic E8 x E8 gauge bundle. We focus on the effective potential for the chiral scalars. The effective…
We consider type IIB compactifications on a general 4D group manifold with different types of possible spacetime filling O-planes and the corresponding D-branes parallel to them. Once fluxes allowed by the associated orientifold projection…
The disk partition function of the open topological string computes the spacetime superpotential for D-branes wrapping cycles of a compact Calabi-Yau threefold. We use string duality to show that when appropriately formulated, the problem…
We continue and extend our earlier investigation ``Strings in a Time-Dependent Orbifold'' (hep-th/0204168). We formulate conditions for an orbifold to be amenable to perturbative string analysis and classify the low dimensional orbifolds…
We give evidence that the all genus amplitudes of topological string theory on compact elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau manifolds can be written in terms of meromorphic Jacobi forms whose weight grows linearly and whose index grows…
We derive a novel deformation of the warped resolved conifold background with supersymmetry breaking ISD (1,2) fluxes by adding D7-branes to this type IIB theory. We find spontaneous supersymmetry breaking without generating a bulk…