Related papers: A Note on Nonperturbative Instability in String Th…
We consider a prescription for introducing deformed dispersion relations in the bosonic string action. We find that in a subset of such theories it remains true that the embedding coordinates propagate linearly on the worldsheet. While both…
We develop an exact functional method applied to the bosonic string on a shperical world sheet, in graviton and dilaton backgrounds, consistent with conformal invariance. In this method, quantum fluctuations are controled by the amplitude…
String amplitudes with an arbitrary number of world-sheet boundaries on which the coordinates satisfy Dirichlet boundary conditions are analyzed in a path integral framework. Special attention is payed to the novel divergences associated…
D-instanton contributions to the mass matrix of arbitrary excited string states of type IIB string theory in the maximally supersymmetric plane-wave background are calculated to leading order in the string coupling using a supersymmetric…
It has been proposed by Sen that the D-instanton effects in string theory can be systematically determined through the framework of open-closed string field theory. We apply the latter formalism to analyze the D-instanton corrections to the…
We discuss higher derivative interactions in the type IIB superstring in ten dimensions. From the fundamental string point of view, the non-perturbative corrections are due to D-instantons. We argue that they can alternatively be understood…
We argue that the Gopakumar-Vafa interpretation of the topological string partition function can be used to compute and resum certain non-perturbative brane instanton effects of type II CY compactifications. In particular the topological…
Macroscopic fundamental and Dirichlet strings have several potential instabilities: breakage, tachyon decays, and confinement by axion domain walls. We investigate the conditions under which metastable strings can exist, and we find that…
The existence of de-Sitter solutions and their stability within string theory became, in recent years, one of the central research questions within the string theory community. The so-called de-Sitter conjecture states that the de-Sitter…
In these lectures we give a brief introduction to perturbative and non-perturbative string theory. The outline is the following: 1. Introduction to perturbative string theory 1.1 From point particle to extended objects 1.2 Free closed and…
We present simple models which exhibit some of the remarkable features expected to hold for the as yet unknown non-perturbative formulation of string theories. Among these are: (a) the absence of a background or embedding space for the full…
The presence of fields with negative mass-squared typically leads to some form of instability in standard field theories. The observation that, at least in the light-cone gauge, strings propagating in plane wave spacetimes can have…
Unstable D-branes are central objects in string theory, and exist also in time-dependent backgrounds. In this paper we take first steps to studying brane decay in spacetime orbifolds. As a concrete model we focus on the R^{1,d}/Z_2…
Basics of some topics on perturbative and non-perturbative string theory are reviewed. After a mathematical survey of the Standard Model of particle physics and GUTs, the bosonic string kinematics for the free case and with interaction is…
We consider the question of asymptotic observables in cosmology. We assume that string theory contains a landscape of vacua, and that metastable de Sitter regions can decay to zero cosmological constant by bubble nucleation. The asymptotic…
We study decay of unstable D-branes in string theory in the presence of electric field, and show that the classical open string theory results for various properties of the final state agree with the properties of closed string states into…
We investigate the incremental stability properties of It\^o stochastic dynamical systems. Specifically, we derive a stochastic version of nonlinear contraction theory that provides a bound on the mean square distance between any two…
These are the lecture notes of the introductory String Theory course held by one of the authors for the master program of Theoretical Physics at Turin University. The world-sheet approach to String Theory is pedagogically introduced in the…
In this paper, we want to emphasize the pivotal role played by strings in the model realizing de Sitter using an expanding bubble, proposed and subsequently developed in arXiv:1807.01570, arXiv:1907.04268, and arXiv:2001.07433. Contrary to…
In this note we expose some surprising connections between string theory and statistical inference. We consider a large collective of agents sweeping out a family of nearby statistical models for an M-dimensional manifold of statistical…