Related papers: Symmetry breaking from Scherk-Schwarz compactifica…
We hypothesize that the vacuum is spontaneously shifted from the self-dual point in the moduli space, at which all dimensions are compact, and that the true vacuum results from the decompactification of the four space-time dimensions and…
We study circle compactifications of tensionless bosonic string theory, both at the classical and the quantum level. The physical state condition for different representations of BMS$_3$, the worldsheet residual gauge symmetry for…
In seven dimensions any spin manifold admits an SU(2) structure and therefore very general M-theory compactifications have the potential to allow for a reduction to N=4 gauged supergravity. We perform this general SU(2) reduction and give…
We investigate warped compactification with an abelian gauge theory in six dimensions. The vanishing cosmological constant in four dimensions can generically be realized with a regular metric even in a 3-brane background without fine tuning…
We show that four-dimensional N=2 supersymmetric SU(n) gauge theory for n>2 necessarily contains vacua with mutually non-local massless dyons, using only analyticity of the effective action and the weak coupling limit of the moduli space of…
The stable envelopes of Okounkov et al. realize some representations of quantum algebras associated to quivers, using geometry. We relate these geometric considerations to quantum field theory. The main ingredients are the supersymmetric…
We analyse the vacuum structure of isotropic Z_2 x Z_2 flux compactifications, allowing for a single set of sources. Combining algebraic geometry with supergravity techniques, we are able to classify all vacua for both type IIA and IIB…
In this note, we present a scenario in which the existence of dS vacua is jeopardized by topological transitions between non-BPS branes and fluxes in type IIB toroidal compactifications. We focus our study on a six-dimensional torus…
Higher dimensional grand unified theories, with gauge symmetry breaking by orbifold compactification, possess SU(5) breaking at fixed points, and do not automatically lead to tree-level gauge coupling unification. A new framework is…
We look for critical points with U(2) residual symmetry in 5-dimensional maximally supersymmetric gauged supergravity, by varying the embedding tensor, rather than directly minimizing the scalar potential. We recover all previously known…
If a theory has more than one classically stable vacuum, quantum tunneling and thermal jumps make the transition between the vacua possible. The transition happens through a first order phase transition started by nucleation of a bubble of…
We study ten-dimensional supersymmetric vacua with NSNS non-geometric fluxes, in the framework of $\beta$-supergravity. We first provide expressions for the fermionic supersymmetry variations. Specifying a compactification ansatz to four…
Electroweak symmetry can be naturally broken by observed quark and gauge fields in various extra-dimensional configurations. No new {\it fundamental} fields are required below the quantum gravitational scale ($\sim$ 10 - 100 TeV). We…
We revisit the possibility of de Sitter vacua and slow-roll inflation in type II string theory at the level of the classical two-derivative supergravity approximation. Previous attempts at explicit constructions were plagued by ubiquitous…
We present further no-go theorems for classical de Sitter vacua in Type II string theory, i.e., de Sitter constructions that do not invoke non-perturbative effects or explicit supersymmetry breaking localized sources. By analyzing the…
We study scenarios in which there is a hierarchy of two sets of large compactified extra dimensions. One particularly interesting case has a single millimeter size extra dimension and five TeV^{-1} size dimensions. The Standard Model gauge…
We study string compactifications with sixteen supersymmetries. The moduli space for these compactifications becomes quite intricate in lower dimensions, partly because there are many different irreducible components. We focus primarily,…
We consider the interplay of duality symmetries and gauged isometries of supergravity models giving N-extended, spontaneously broken supergravity with a no-scale structure. Some examples, motivated by superstring and M-theory…
Four-dimensional supersymmetric type II string theory vacua can be described elegantly in terms of pure spinors on the generalized tangent bundle T+T*. In this paper, we apply the same techniques to any ten-dimensional supersymmetric…
Classical flux compactifications contribute to a well-controlled corner of the string landscape, therefore providing an important testing ground for a variety of conjectures. We focus here on type II supergravity compactifications on 6d…