Related papers: Quotient Stacks and String Orbifolds

This thesis is concerned with the geometry of toroidal orbifolds and their applications in string theory. By resolving the orbifold singularities via blow-ups, one arrives at a smooth Calabi-Yau manifold. The systematic method to do so is…

This paper investigates the significance of T-duality in string theory: the indistinguishability with respect to all observables, of models attributing radically different radii to space -- larger than the observable universe, or far…

We study the equivariant generalization of topological strings on toric manifolds, focusing in particular on defining the contributions of constant maps in the genus expansion of the partition function. This approach regularizes the…

Infinite-dimensional Grassmannian manifold contains moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces of all genera. This well known fact leads to a conjecture that non-perturbative string theory can be formulated in terms of Grassmannian. We present new…

Inspired by the intimate relationship between Voiculescu's noncommutative probability theory (of type A) and large-N matrix models in physics, we look for physical models related to noncommutative probability theory of type B. These turn…

We study a topological obstruction of a very stringy nature concerned with deforming the target space of an $N=2$ non-linear \sm. This target space has a singularity which may be smoothed away according to the conventional rules of geometry…

We study maps from a 2D world-sheet to a 2D target space which include folds. The geometry of folds is discussed and a metric on the space of folded maps is written down. We show that the latter is not invariant under area preserving…

We study machine learning of phenomenologically relevant properties of string compactifications, which arise in the context of heterotic line bundle models. Both supervised and unsupervised learning are considered. We find that, for a fixed…

String propagation on a curved background defines an embedding problem of surfaces in differential geometry. Using this, we show that in a wide class of backgrounds the classical dynamics of the physical degrees of freedom of the string…

We construct equivariant, string and leading order characteristic classes and Chern-Simons classes for certain infinite rank bundles associated to fibrations occurring in loop spaces, Gromov-Witten theory and gauge theory. Results include a…

Open and Closed super-string field theories are constructed in an event-symmetric target space. The partition functions of Statistical and Quantum models are constructed in terms of invariants defined on Lie-algebra representations. An…

I present a new class of topological string theories, and discuss them in two dimensions as candidates for the string description of large-$N$ QCD. The starting point is a new class of topological sigma models, whose path integral is…

We study the elliptic genera of two-dimensional orbifold CFTs, where the orbifolding procedure introduces du Val surface singularities on the target space. The N=4 character decompositions of the elliptic genus contributions from the…

Simplicial homology manifolds are proposed as an interesting class of geometric objects, more general than topological manifolds but still quite tractable, in which questions about the microstructure of space-time can be naturally…

We use mirror symmetry to establish the first concrete arena of spacetime topology change in string theory. In particular, we establish that the {\it quantum theories} based on certain nonlinear sigma models with topologically distinct…

This work concludes a series of four papers on the foundational theory of orbifolds and stacks. We apply the abstract theory, developed in its predecessors, to orbifolds derived from manifolds. Specifically, we show how the very concrete…

We describe conventional orientifold and orbifold quotients of string and M-theory in a unified approach based on exceptional field theory (ExFT). Using an extended spacetime, ExFT combines all the maximal ten and eleven dimensional…

This is mainly a brief review of some key achievements in a `hot'' area of theoretical and mathematical physics. The principal aim is to outline the basic structures underlying {\em integrable} quantum field theory models with {\em…

We present a string theory that reproduces the large-$N$ expansion of two dimensional Yang-Mills gauge theory on arbitrary surfaces. First, a new class of topological sigma models is introduced, with path integrals localized to the moduli…

I argue that the ten dimensional non--supersymmetric tachyonic superstrings may serve as good starting points for the construction of viable phenomenological vacua. Thus, enlarging the space of possible solutions that may address some of…