Related papers: String/M-branes for Relativists
This book chapter presents a brief introduction to black holes and branes in supergravity, focussing on 11-dimensional supergravity and type II supergravities in 10-dimension. The chapter is aimed at graduate students who have completed a…
We review the recent developments in superstrings. We start with a brief summary of various consistent superstring theories and discuss T-duality which necessarily leads to the presence of D-branes. The properties of D-branes are summarized…
This review is devoted to strings and branes. Firstly, perturbative string theory is introduced. The appearance of various types of branes is discussed. These include orbifold fixed planes, D-branes and orientifold planes. The connection to…
These lectures intend to give a pedagogical introduction into some of the developments in string theory during the last years. They include perturbative T-duality and non perturbative S- and U-dualities, their unavoidable demand for…
We present a class of Kaluza-Klein electrically charged black p-brane solutions of ten-dimensional, type IIA superstring theory. Uplifting to eleven dimensions these solutions are studied in the context of M-theory. They can be interpreted…
The aim of this talk is to provide non-experts with a brief and elementary introduction on the field of extra dimensions. The main motivation for extra dimensions relies on the more fundamental string theories that predict ten (or eleven)…
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 study the properties of branes in supergravity theory. We investigate a class of systems consisting of an M5-brane in the Kaluza-Klein monopole background with 1/4 supersymmetry in 11-dimensions. In the near core region of the…
Type-IIB supergravity in ten dimensions admits two consistent $Z_2$ truncations. After the insertion of D9-branes, one of them leads to the low-energy action of type-I string theory, and it can be performed in two different ways, in…
Supergravity brane solutions allow for a generalised type of Kaluza-Klein reduction onto brane worldvolumes. The known replacement of a flat worldvolume metric by a Ricci-flat metric constitutes a consistent Kaluza-Klein truncation of the…
We show that the branes of ten-dimensional IIA/IIB string theory must satisfy, upon toroidal compactification, specific wrapping rules in order to reproduce the number of supersymmetric branes that follows from a supergravity analysis. The…
Recent developments in string and M theory rely heavily on supersymmetry suggesting that a revival of superspace techniques in ten and eleven dimensions may be advantageous. Here we discuss three topics of current interest where superspace…
We will report on recent advances in the understanding of non-perturbative interconnections between different string dualities. Weak-strong coupling duality (S-duality) and T-duality (symmetry under compactification on dual tori) allows one…
These lectures present an introduction to supergravity, and are intended for graduate students with a working knowledge of quantum field theory, including the elementary group theory needed for it, but no prior knowledge of general…
Dualities link M-theory, the 10+1 dimensional strong coupling limit of the IIA string, to other 11-dimensional theories in signatures 9+2 and 6+5, and to type II string theories in all 10-dimensional signatures. We study the…
Superunification underwent a major paradigm shift in 1984 when eleven-dimensional supergravity was knocked off its pedestal by ten-dimensional superstrings. This last year has witnessed a new shift of equal proportions: perturbative…
Four dimensional supergravities may be the right framework to describe particle physics at low energies. Its connection to the underlying string theory can be implemented through higher dimensional supergravities which bear special…
We discuss some general properties of "defect branes", i.e. branes of co-dimension two, in (toroidally compactified) IIA/IIB string theory. In particular, we give a full classification of the supersymmetric defect branes in dimensions 2 < D…
We study compactifications of string theory and M-theory to six dimensions with background fluxes. The nonzero fluxes lead to additional mass parameters. We derive the S- and T-duality rules for the corresponding (massive) supergravity…
String and M-theory contain a family of branes forming U-duality multiplets. In particular, standard branes with codimension higher than or equal to two, can be explicitly found as supergravity solutions. However, whether domain-wall branes…