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A rich pattern of gauge symmetries is found in the moduli space of heterotic string toroidal compactifications, at fixed points of the T-duality transformations. We analyze this pattern for generic tori, and scrutinize in full detail…
When the gauge groups of the two heterotic string theories are broken, over tori, to their "SO(16)x SO(16)" subgroups, the winding modes correspond to representations which are spinorial with respect to those subgroups. Globally, the two…
A discussion of the number of degrees of freedom, and their dynamical properties, in higher derivative gravitational theories is presented. The complete non-linear sigma model for these degrees of freedom is exhibited using the method of…
Using results on topological band theory of phases of matter and discrete symmetries, we study topological properties of band structure of physical systems involving spin $\frac{1}{2}$ and $\frac{3}{2}$ fermions. We apply this approach to…
We use the superspace formulation of supergravity in eleven and ten dimensions to compute fermion couplings on the M2-brane and on D$p$-branes. In this formulation fermionic couplings arise naturally from the $\theta$-expansion of the…
The standard eleven-dimensional supergravity action depends on a three-form gauge field and does not allow direct coupling to five-branes. Using previously developed methods, we construct a covariant eleven-dimensional supergravity action…
We formulate a theory of topological membranes on manifolds with G_2 holonomy. The BRST charges of the theories are the superspace Killing vectors (the generators of global supersymmetry) on the background with reduced holonomy G_2. In the…
In this thesis, we present two aspects of higher-spin gauge field theories: dualities and interactions. We first consider dualities of the free theories at the level of the action. Then, external "electric" and "magnetic" sources are…
We study U-duality symmetries of toroidally compactified M theory from the membrane worldvolume point of view. This is done taking the most general set of bosonic background fields into account. Upon restriction to pure moduli backgrounds,…
We find a dual gravity theory to pure confining N=1 supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theory in four dimensions which has the correct gauge coupling running in addition to reproducing the appropriate pattern of chiral symmetry breaking. It is…
This thesis analyses gauged supergravities in various dimensions and their possible origin from compactifications of string theory. In the effective description the fluxes appear in the theory as deformation parameters generating a…
For a general class of SO(4) symmetric backgrounds in type II-supergravity, we show that the action of non-Abelian T-duality can be described via consistent truncation to seven dimensional theories with seemingly massive modes. As such, any…
We advocate that the orbifold Z_2 symmetry of the gravity trapping model proposed by Randall and Sundrum can be seen, in appropriate coordinates, as a symmetry that exchanges the short distances with the large ones. Using diffeomorphism…
In this paper we propose a duality for non-holomorphic N=1 CS-matter theories living on M2 branes probing Spin(7) cones. We call this duality Spin(7) duality. Two theories are named Spin(7) dual if they have the same moduli space: a real…
We show that the full global symmetry groups of all the D-dimensional maximal supergravities can be described in terms of the closure of the internal general coordinate transformations of the toroidal compactifications of D=11 supergravity…
Using U-duality, the properties of the matrix theories corresponding to the compactification of M-theory on $T^d$ are investigated. The couplings of the $d+1$ dimensional effective Super-Yang-Mills theory to all the M-theory moduli is…
We consider different types of fractional branes on a Z_2 orbifold of the conifold and analyze in detail the corresponding gauge/gravity duality. The gauge theory possesses a rich and varied dynamics, both in the UV and in the IR. We find…
When string/M-theory is compactified to lower dimensions, the U-duality symmetry predicts so-called exotic branes whose higher dimensional origin cannot be explained by the standard string/M-theory branes. We argue that exotic branes can be…
We study four-dimensional N=1 Spin(10) gauge theory with a single spinor and vectors at the superconformal fixed point via the electric-magnetic duality and a-maximization. When gauge invariant chiral primary operators hit the unitarity…
While M- and F-theory compactifications describe a much larger class of vacua than perturbative string compactifications, they typically need singularities to generate non-abelian gauge fields and charged matter. The physical explanation…