Related papers: TASI Lectures on de Sitter Vacua
We study the hypermultiplet moduli space of the type II string compactified on a Calabi-Yau space $\bX$. We do this by using IIA/IIB duality in a compactification of the same theory on $\bX\times \bS ^1$ and by using recent results on three…
We examine the Kaluza-Klein theory for warped flux compactifications of type $II\ b $ string theory on a Minkowski spacetime $ M_4$ times a conic Calabi-Yau orientifold $X_6$. The region glued along the internal space directions to the bulk…
We explain and illustrate how to compute string-loop amplitudes in Calabi-Yau orientifold compactification in the large volume limit with the help of the patch-by-patch description of string field theory. We compute the one-loop partition…
We study compactifications of type IIB supergravity on Calabi-Yau threefolds. The resulting low energy effective Lagrangian is displayed in the large volume limit and its symmetry properties - with specific emphasis on the SL(2,Z) - are…
We describe a simple class of type IIA string compactifications on Calabi-Yau manifolds where background fluxes generate a potential for the complex structure moduli, the dilaton, and the K\"ahler moduli. This class of models corresponds to…
We study topology change in M theory compactifications on Calabi-Yau three-folds in the presence of G flux (the four form field strength). In particular, we discuss vacuum solutions in strongly coupled heterotic string theory in which the…
We study in detail some aspects of duality between type IIB and M-theory. We focus on the duality between type IIB string theory on K3 x T^2/Z_2 orientifold and M-theory on K3 x K3, in the F-theory limit. We give the explicit map between…
Simple examples are given of bundles on Calabi-Yau 3-folds satisfying 8 out of 9 conditions required for a realistic compactification of string theory to 4 dimensions.
We obtain the vacuum solutions for M-theory compactified on eight-manifolds with non-vanishing four-form flux by analyzing the scalar potential appearing in the three-dimensional theory. Many of these vacua are not supersymmetric and yet…
We consider flux vacua for type IIB orientifold compactifications and study their interplay with the tadpole-cancellation condition. As a concrete example we focus on $\mathbb T^6/\mathbb Z_2\times \mathbb Z_2$, for which we find that…
We consider F/M/Type IIA theory compactified to four, three, or two dimensions on a Calabi-Yau four-fold, and study the behavior near an isolated singularity in the presence of appropriate fluxes and branes. We analyze the vacuum and…
After a short introduction to Matrix theory, we explain how can one generalize matrix models to describe toroidal compactifications of M-theory and the heterotic vacua with 16 supercharges. This allows us, for the first time in history, to…
It is emphasized that compactified little string theories have compact moduli spaces of vacua, which globally probe compact string geometry. Compactifying various little string theories on T^3 leads to 3d theories with exact, quantum…
This review talk focusses on some of the interesting developments in the area of superstring compactification that have occurred in the last couple of years. These include the discovery that ``mirror symmetric" pairs of Calabi--Yau spaces,…
The search for classically stable Type IIA de-Sitter vacua typically starts with an ansatz that gives Anti-de-Sitter supersymmetric vacua and then raises the cosmological constant by modifying the compactification. As one raises the…
Finding four-dimensional de Sitter spacetime solutions in string theory has been a vexing quest ever since the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe. Building on a recent analysis of bubble-nucleation in the decay of…
In these lectures, two different aspects of brane world scenarios in 5d gravity or string theory are discussed. In the first two lectures, work on how warped compactifications of 5d gravity theories can change the guise of the hierarchy…
We discuss a novel strategy to construct 4D N=0 stable flux vacua of type II string theory, based on the existence of BPS bounds for probe D-branes in some of these backgrounds. In particular, we consider compactifications where D-branes…
These lecture notes introduce conifold transitions between complex threefolds with trivial canonical bundle from the differential geometric point of view, and with a particular view towards aspects of mathematical physics and string theory.…
The late-time behavior of our universe is one of accelerated expansion, or that of a de Sitter space, and therefore motivates us to look for time-dependent backgrounds. Finding such backgrounds in string theory has always been a challenging…