Related papers: Recent Progress in Weakly-Coupled Heterotic String…
One cannot yet point to any firm string prediction. While many approximate string ground states are known with interesting properties, we do not have any argument that one or another describes what we observe around us, and for reasons…
We provide a study of the phenomenology of orbifold compactifications of the heterotic string within the context of supergravity effective theories. Our investigation focuses on those models where the soft Lagrangian is dominated by loop…
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…
We study cosmological solutions to the low-energy effective action of heterotic string theory including possible leading order $\alpha'$ corrections and a potential for the dilaton. We consider the possibility that including such stringy…
Many N=1 heterotic string compactifications exhibit physically mysterious singularities at codimension one in the moduli space of vacua. At these singularities, Yukawa couplings of charged fields develop poles as a function of the moduli.…
The string one loop renormalization of the gauge coupling constants is examined in abelian orbifold models. The contributions to string threshold corrections independent of the compactification moduli fields are evaluated numerically for…
Four-dimensional string theories predict in general the existence of light exotic particles with fractional electric charges. Such particles could escape present observations if they are confined by a gauge group of the "hidden" sector into…
We show that fractional flux from Wilson lines can stabilize the moduli of heterotic string compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds. We observe that the Wilson lines used in GUT symmetry breaking naturally induce a fractional flux. When…
Static solutions with a bulk dilaton are derived in the context of six dimensional warped compactification. In the string frame, exponentially decreasing warp factors are identified with critical points of the low energy $\beta$-functions…
These lectures are intended as an introduction to some of the basic aspects of string solitons, duality and black holes. We begin with a discussion of the role of classical solutions in duality, then focus on string/string duality and…
We review recent works on supersymmetry breaking and gauge mediation. We survey our current understanding of dynamical supersymmetry breaking mechanisms and describe new model building tools using duality, meta-stability, and stringy…
String theory axions appear to be promising candidates for explaining cosmological constant via quintessence. In this paper, we study conditions on the string compactifications under which axion quintessence can happen. For sufficiently…
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…
We demonstrate that asymmetric reheating arises in a large ensemble of string compactifications with many axions and gauged dark sectors. This phenomenon may help avoid numerous cosmological problems that may arise if the sectors were…
We study systems of multiple localized closed string tachyons and the phenomena associated with their condensation, in C3/ZN nonsupersymmetric noncompact orbifold singularities using gauged linear sigma model constructions, following…
We briefly review the recent programme to construct, systematically and algorithmically, large classes of heterotic vacua, as well as the search for the MSSM therein. Specifically, we outline the monad construction of vector bundles over…
We analyze the theory of softly broken supersymmetric $QCD$. Exotic behavior like spontaneously broken baryon number, massless composite fermions and Seiberg's duality seems to persist also in the presence of (small) soft supersymmetry…
Four-dimensional compactifications of string theory provide a controlled set of possible gauge representations accounting for BSM particles and dark sector components. In this review, constraints from perturbative Type II string…
I discuss some (unconventional) aspects of String Cosmology of relevance to supersymmetric dark matter searches at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. In particular, I analyse the role of time-dependent dilaton fields in relaxing some…
We start with a brief account of the latest analysis of the Oklo phenomenon providing the still most stringent constraint on time-variability of the fine- structure constant $\alpha$. Comparing this with the recent result from the…