Related papers: Testing the Heterotic String with the Axion-Photon…
Phenomenological explorations of heterotic strings have conventionally focused primarily on the E8xE8 theory. We consider smooth compactifications of all three ten-dimensional heterotic theories to exhibit the many similarities between the…
Strongly coupled heterotic $E_8\times E_8$ string theory, compactified to four dimensions on a large Calabi-Yau manifold ${\bf X}$, may represent a viable candidate for the description of low-energy particle phenomenology. In this regime,…
Consistent frameworks of quantum gravity often predict the existence of large numbers of ultralight pseudoscalar degrees of freedom, forming the phenomenological landscape of the String Axiverse. The complexity of the extra-dimensional…
We revisit the study of light interacting with QCD axion domain walls from the perspective of the non-linear axion coupling to photons, $g(a) F \tilde F$, which encodes the effects related to the breaking of the axion shift symmetry…
Recent measurements of the values of gauge coupling constants as well as neutrino properties support the idea of a grand unified (GUT) description of particle physics at a large scale of $M_{GUT}\sim 10^{16}$ GeV. We discuss a strategy to…
We study axion strings of hyperlight axions coupled to photons. Hyperlight axions -- axions lighter than Hubble at recombination -- are a generic prediction of the string axiverse. These axions strings produce a distinct quantized…
Dynamical mechanisms to generate an ultralight axion of mass $\sim 10^{-21}-10^{-22}$ eV in supergravity and strings are discussed. An ultralight particle of this mass provides a candidate for dark matter that may play a role for cosmology…
In this paper we discuss compactifications of M-theory to four dimensions on X \times S^1/Z_2, in which nonstandard embeddings in the E_8 \times E_8 vacuum gauge bundle are considered. At the level of the effective field theory description…
In this paper we investigate a natural extension of the Standard Model that involves varying coupling constants. This is a general expectation in any fundamental theory such as string theory, and there are good reasons for why new physics…
The first searches for axions and axion-like particles with the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment are presented. Under the assumption of an axio-electric interaction in xenon, the coupling constant between axions and electrons, gAe…
The little hierarchy between the GUT scale and the string scale may give us some hints that can be tested at the LHC. To achieve string-scale gauge coupling unification, we introduce additional vector-like particles. We require that these…
We re-examine the question of heterotic - heterotic string duality in six dimensions and argue that the $E_8\times E_8$ heterotic string, compactified on $K3$ with equal instanton numbers in the two $E_8$'s, has a self-duality that inverts…
In this thesis, we explore two approaches to string phenomenology. In the first half of the work, we investigate M-theory compactifications on spaces with co-dimension four, orbifold singularities. We construct M-theory on C^2/Z_N by…
Embeddings of the standard model in type II string theory typically contain a variety of U(1) gauge factors arising from D-branes in the bulk. In general, there is no reason why only one of these - the one corresponding to weak hypercharge…
In heterotic string theories consistency requires the introduction of a non-trivial vector bundle. This bundle breaks the original ten-dimensional gauge groups $\text{E}_8\times\text{E}_8$ or $\text{SO}(32)$ for the supersymmetric heterotic…
We explore the extent to which string theories with higher-level gauge symmetries and non-standard hypercharge normalizations can reconcile the discrepancy between the string unification scale and the GUT scale extrapolated from the Minimal…
We propose a novel method to detect axions which uniquely depends on the dimensionless axion-photon coupling $g_{\gamma}$, independent of the suppressive axion decay constant $f_a$. Using neutron star PSR B1919+21 data from the…
In this paper we investigate the freely propagating fields behind the results in [6]. In [6] we calculated the magnetic dipole moment of the muon and the electric dipole moments of the muon, electron and the neutron (in a simple quark…
We review the possibility that the Supersymmetric Standard Model arises from orbifold constructions of the E_8 x E_8 Heterotic Superstring, and the phenomenological properties that such a model should have. In particular, trying to solve…
In this work we revisit five different point sources within or behind galaxy clusters in order to constrain the coupling constant between axion-like particles (ALPs) and photons. We use three distinct machine learning (ML) techniques and…