Related papers: Symmetry breaking from Scherk-Schwarz compactifica…
The highly non-trivial structure of the $\theta$--vacuum encodes many of the fundamental properties of gauge theories. In particular, the response of the vacuum to the $\theta$--term perturbation is sensitive to the existence of…
A ten-dimensional supersymmetric $E_8$ gauge theory is compactified over six-dimensional coset spaces, establishing further our earlier conjecture that the resulting four dimensional theory is a softly broken supersymmetric gauge theory in…
We conjecture that the extra dimensions are physical non-compact at high energy scale or high temperature; after the symmetry breaking or cosmological phase transition, the bulk cosmological constant may become negative, and then, the extra…
We analyze the finite temperature structure of the standard model coupled to gravity with one and two dimensions compactified (on a circle and a torus). We find that finite temperature effects wash out any vacua which exist at zero…
We study the $3d$ $\mathcal{N}=2$ theories resulting from the compactification of a family of $5d$ SCFTs on a torus with flux in the global symmetry. The family of $5d$ SCFTs used in the analysis is the one that UV completes the $5d$…
We consider six-dimensional supergravity with Abelian bulk flux compactified on an orbifold. The effective low-energy action can be expressed in terms of N=1 chiral moduli superfields with a gauged shift symmetry. The D-term potential…
We consider type II (non-)geometric flux backgrounds in the absence of brane sources, and construct their explicit embedding into maximal gauged D=4 supergravity. This enables one to investigate the critical points, mass spectra and gauge…
A new viewpoint for the gauge hierarchy problem is proposed: compactification at a large scale, 1/R, leads to a low energy effective theory with supersymmetry softly broken at a much lower scale, \alpha/R. The hierarchy is induced by an…
We review recent developments in our understanding of the dynamics of strongly-coupled chiral $SU(N)$ gauge theories in four dimensions, problems which are potentially important in our quest to go beyond the standard $SU(3)_{QCD} \times…
We review the six dimensional universal extra dimension models compactified on the sphere $S^2$, the orbifold $S^2/Z_2$, and the projective sphere, which are based on the spontaneous compactification mechanism on the sphere. In particular,…
Supersymmetry breaking and compactification of extra space-time dimensions may have a common dynamical origin if our universe is spontaneously generated in the form of a four-dimensional topological or non-topological defect in higher…
We demonstrate that flux compactifications of type IIA string theory can classically stabilize all geometric moduli. For a particular orientifold background, we explicitly construct an infinite family of supersymmetric vacua with all moduli…
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…
This review article consists of two parts. In the first part we use the formalism of (exceptional) generalized geometry to derive the scalar field space of SU(2)xSU(2)-structure compactifications. We show that in contrast to SU(3)xSU(3)…
We consider four-dimensional N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories with gauge group U(N) on R^3 x S^1, in the presence of a classical superpotential. The low-energy quantum superpotential is obtained by simply replacing the adjoint scalar…
Compactified string theories give rise to discrete symmetries which are essential if they are to provide a realistic low energy theory. We find that in a class of four dimensional string theories these symmetries are constrained by similar…
In addition to the familiar string theories with spacetime supersymmetry, there exist a number of non-supersymmetric ten-dimensional superstrings. Nearly all of these theories have closed string tachyons, indicating a misidentification of…
We study moduli stabilisation in four-dimensional $N=1$ supergravity theories which originate from compactifications of the heterotic string on certain manifolds with $SU(3)$ structure. These theories have a non-trivial superpotential…
Global aspects of Scherk-Schwarz dimensional reduction are discussed and it is shown that it can usually be viewed as arising from a compactification on the compact space obtained by identifying a (possibly non-compact) group manifold G…
Positive vacuum energy together with extra dimensions of space imply that our four-dimensional Universe is unstable, generically to decompactification of the extra dimensions. Either quantum tunneling or thermal fluctuations carry one past…