Related papers: How to Falsify String Theory at a Collider
Recent developments in string theory suggest that string theory landscape of vacua is vast. It is natural to ask if this landscape is as vast as allowed by consistent-looking effective field theories. We use universality ideas from string…
The string effective action at tree level contains, in its bosonic sector, the Einstein-Hilbert term, the dilaton, and the axion, besides scalar and gauge fields coming from the Ramond-Ramond sector. The reduction to four dimensions brings…
The past year has seen enormous progress in string theory. It has become clear that all of the different string theories are different limits of a single theory. Moreover, in certain limits, one obtains a new, eleven-dimensional structure…
I summarize and discuss some recent results on formulating actions of six-dimensional superconformal field theories using the language of higher gauge theory. The latter guarantees mathematical consistency of our constructions and we review…
It is commonly thought that small couplings in a low-energy theory, such as those needed for the fermion mass hierarchy or proton stability, must originate from symmetries in a high-energy theory. We show that this expectation is violated…
Making use of the wealth of new observational data coming from the sky it is possible to constrain particle physics theories beyond the Standard Model. One way to do this is illustrated in this article: a subset of theories admits cosmic…
String theory is the prime candidate for the theory of everything. However, it must be defined in ten dimensions to be consistent. To get 4D physics, the 6 other dimensions should be curled up in a small compact manifold, this procedure is…
We approach the following question: if supersymmetry is discovered, how can we select among different supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model? In particular, we perform an analysis of the sparticle spectrum in low-energy string…
A class of non-supersymmetric string backgrounds can be constructed using twists that involve space-time fermion parity. We propose a non-perturbative definition of string theory in these backgrounds via gauge theories with supersymmetry…
We discuss two classes of exact (in $\a'$) string solutions described by conformal sigma models. They can be viewed as two possibilities of constructing a conformal model out of the non-conformal one based on the metric of a $D$-dimensional…
In hidden sector models with an extra U(1) gauge group, new fields can interact with the Standard Model only through gauge kinetic mixing and the Higgs portal. After the U(1) is spontaneously broken, these interactions couple the resultant…
In string models with "brane supersymmetry breaking" exponential potentials emerge at (closed-string) tree level but are not accompanied by tachyons. Potentials of this type have long been a source of embarrassment in flat space, but can…
String theory and supersymmetry are theoretical ideas that go beyond the standard model of particle physics and show promise for unifying all forces. After a brief introduction to supersymmetry, we discuss the prospects for its experimental…
We show that the coefficients of operators in the electroweak chiral Lagrangian can be bounded if the underlying theory obeys the usual assumptions of Lorentz invariance, analyticity, unitarity and crossing to arbitrarily short distances.…
We discuss string theory vacua which have the wrong number of spacetime dimensions, and give a crude argument that vacua with more than four large dimensions are improbable. We then turn to two dimensional vacua, which naively appear to…
Point particles fall freely along geodesics; strings do not. In string theory all probes of spacetime structure, including photons, are extended objects and therefore always subject to tidal forces. We illustrate how string theory modifies…
The wedge states form an important subalgebra in the string field theory. We review and further investigate their various properties. We find in particular a novel expression for the wedge states, which allows to understand their star…
This thesis is devoted to the study of a class of constructions based on Superstring Theory, baptized in the literature as Intersecting Brane Worlds. In particular we explore several issues regarding the proposal of Intersecting Brane…
We study percolation on the worldsheets of string theory for $c=0,1/2,1$ and $2$. For $c<1$ we find that critical exponents measured from simulations agree quite well with the theoretical values. For $c=1$ we show how log corrections…
Pulsar timing observations precisely test general relativity. Recently, the hierarchical triple system PSR J0337+1715 has placed new constraints on the existence of a fifth force from violation in the strong equivalence principle. Many…