Related papers: Cosmic Topological Defects from Holography

Realization of topological insulators (TIs) and superconductors (TSCs), such as the quantum spin Hall effect and the Z_2 topological insulator, in terms of D-branes in string theory is proposed. We establish a one-to-one correspondence…

These lectures review certain topological defects and aspects of their cosmology. Unconventional material includes brief descriptions of electroweak defects, the structure of domain walls in non-Abelian theories, and the spectrum of…

I make a novel contact between string theory and degenerate fermion dynamics in thin semiconductors. Utilizing AdS/CFT correspondence in string theory and tunability of coupling parameters in condensed matter systems, I focus on the…

We investigate some classical aspects of fundamental strings via numerical experiments. In particular, we study the thermodynamics of a string network within a toroidal universe, as a function of string energy density and space…

We present a top-down string theory holographic model of strongly interacting relativistic 2+1-dimensional fermions, paying careful attention to the discrete symmetries of parity and time reversal invariance. Our construction is based on…

Our answer is the latter. Space-time singularities, including the initial one, are described by world-sheet topological Abelian gauge theories with a Chern-Simons term. Their effective $N=2$ supersymmetry provides an initial fixed point…

We speculate that the weak gravity conjecture applied to theories with holographic duals bans the existence of disordered phases at zero temperature. We test this idea by introducing a non-zero baryon chemical potential in a deformation of…

We study the dynamics of probe D7 $\overline{\rm D7}$ flavor probe branes in the background of near extremal D5 branes. This model is a holographic dual to a gauge theory with spontaneous breaking of a $U(N_f)_L\times U(N_f)_R$ chiral…

Z3 gauge theory with dynamical (bosonic) matter is studied in 4 dimensions with a finite chemical potential. This theory could be viewed as an effective theory describing the centre vortex picture of QCD colour confinement, but it is…

(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…

We study a set of asymmetric deformations of non-critical superstring theories in various dimensions. The deformations arise as Kaehler and complex structure deformations of an orthogonal two-torus comprising of a parallel and a transverse…

We propose a holographic dual of large N_c QCD with the gauge group O(N_c) and USp(N_c) and N_f flavors of massless quarks. This is constructed by adding O6-planes to an intersecting D4-D8 system in type IIA superstring theory. The…

We study the behaviour and consequences of cosmic string networks in contracting universes. They approximately behave during the collapse phase as a radiation fluids. Scaling solutions describing this are derived and tested against…

Recently, Kim, Shiu and Vafa proposed general consistency conditions for six dimensional supergravity theories with minimal supersymmetry coming from couplings to strings. We test them in explicit perturbative orientifold models in order to…

Building on [1], we examine a holographic model in which a U(1) symmetry and translational invariance are broken spontaneously at the same time. The symmetry breaking is realized through the St\"{u}ckelberg mechanism, and leads to a scalar…

Topological defects are produced during phase transitions in the very early Universe. They arise in most unified theories of strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions. These lectures focus on the role of topological defects in…

We find non-critical string backgrounds in five and eight dimensions, holographically related to four-dimensional conformal field theories with N=0 and N=1 supersymmetries. In the five-dimensional case we find an AdS_5 background metric for…

It has been conjectured that Little String Theories in six dimensions are holographic to critical string theory in a linear dilaton background. We test this conjecture for theories arising on the worldvolume of heterotic fivebranes. We…

It was recently shown that the theory obtained by deforming a general two dimensional conformal theory by the irrelevant operator $T\bar T$ is solvable. In the context of holography, a large class of such theories can be obtained by…

We show that holography imposes strong and general constraints on scalar field potentials in the string landscape, determined by the asymptotic structure of the underlying spacetime. Applying these holographic consistency conditions, we…