Related papers: Supersymmetry Breaking with Fields, Strings and Br…
These lectures aim to provide a global picture of the spaces of consistent quantum supergravity theories and string vacua in higher dimensions. The lectures focus on theories in the even dimensions 10, 8, and 6. Supersymmetry, along with…
Superstring theories are the most promising theories for unified description of all fundamental interactions including gravity. However, these theories are formulated consistently only in 10 spacetime dimensions. Therefore, to connect to…
The subject of this thesis are various ways to construct four-dimensional quantum field theories from string theory. In a first part we study the generation of a supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, coupled to an adjoint chiral superfield,…
Using the embedding tensor formalism we give the general conditions for the existence of N=1 vacua in spontaneously broken N=2 supergravities. Our results confirm the necessity of having both electrically and magnetically charged multiplets…
The tachyon-free nonsupersymmetric string theories in ten dimensions have dilaton tadpoles which forbid a Minkowski vacuum. We determine the maximally symmetric backgrounds for the $USp(32)$ Type I string and the $SO(16)\times SO(16)$…
Supersymmetry breaking in string perturbation theory predicts the existence of a new dimension at the TeV scale. The simplest realization of the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model in the context of this mechanism has two important…
We investigate in detail solutions of supergravity that involve warped products of flat geometries of the type M(p+1) x R x T(D-p-2) depending on a single coordinate. In the absence of fluxes, the solutions include flat space and…
The Standard Model is the low-energy limit of a microscopic theory which includes extra dimensions and new symmetries. A part of my thesis consisted in constructing a new class of models with two extra dimensions. We showed that these…
We construct D=4 Type I vacua with massless content remarkably close to that of the standard model of particle physics. They are tachyon-free non-supersymmetric models which are obtained starting with a standard D=4, N=1 compact Type IIB…
Tadpoles accompany, in one form or another, all attempts to realize supersymmetry breaking in String Theory, making the present constructions at best incomplete. Whereas these tadpoles are typically large, a closer look at the problem from…
We conjecture a geometric criterion for determining whether supersymmetry is spontaneously broken in certain string backgrounds. These backgrounds contain wrapped branes at Calabi-Yau singularites with obstructions to deformation of the…
In this dissertation, we study the generalized symmetries in supergravities and superconformal field theories from the string theory perspective. Part one is devoted to the study of string universality in high spacetime dimensions.…
We determine the $d+1$ dimensional topological field theory, which encodes the higher-form symmetries and their 't Hooft anomalies for $d$-dimensional QFTs obtained by compactifying M-theory on a non-compact space $X$. The resulting theory,…
The region of moduli space of string theories which is most likely to describe the "real world" is where the string coupling is about unity and the volume of extra compact dimensions is about the same size as the string volume. Here we map…
1. Preliminaries. 2. Heterotic string and motivations for large volume compactifications; 2.1 Gauge coupling unification; 2.2 Supersymmetry breaking by compactification. 3. M-theory on S^1/Z_2 \times Calabi-Yau. 4. Type I/I' string theory…
We construct four dimensional intersecting D6-brane models that have locally the spectrum of the N=1 Supersymmetric Standard Model. All open {\em visible} string sectors share the same N=1 supersymmetry. As expected in these supersymmetric…
In this paper we consider gauged N=2 supergravities which arise in the low-energy limit of type II string theories and study examples which exhibit spontaneous partial supersymmetry breaking. For the quantum STU model we derive the scalar…
We discuss the reduction of the eleven-dimensional M-theory effective Lagrangian, considering first compactification from eleven to five dimensions on a Calabi-Yau manifold, followed by reduction to four dimensions on an S_1/Z_2 line…
We propose a new mechanism of spontaneous supersymmetry breaking. The existence of extra dimensions with nontrivial topology plays an important role. We investigate new features resulted from the mechanism in two simple supersymmetric Z_2…
We consider a 2-parameter class of solvable closed superstring models which `interpolate' between Kaluza-Klein and dilatonic Melvin magnetic flux tube backgrounds. The spectrum of string states has similarities with Landau spectrum for a…