Related papers: Vacuum Structure and Global Strings with Conical S…
In this colloquium-level account, I describe the cosmological constant problem: why is the energy of empty space at least 60 orders of magnitude smaller than several known contributions to it from the Standard Model of particle physics? I…
Flat directions are a generic feature of the scalar potential in supersymmetric gauge field theories. They can arise, for example, from D-terms associated with an extra abelian gauge symmetry. Even when supersymmetry is broken softly, there…
In this letter we show that vacuum string field theory contains exact solutions that can be interpreted as macroscopic fundamental strings. They are formed by a condensate of infinitely many completely space-localized solutions (D0-branes).
We compute string scattering amplitudes in an orbifold of Minkowski space by a boost, and show how certain divergences in the four point function are associated with graviton exchange near the singularity. These divergences reflect large…
The Regge trajectories, upon which string theory is based, behave as rigid rotators rather than vibrating strings. The same relation, between the angular momentum, and the square of the mass, can be found in gravity, the electroweak, and…
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.…
We study string theory in supersymmetric time-dependent backgrounds. In the framework of general relativity, supersymmetry for spacetimes without flux implies the existence of a covariantly constant null vector, and a relatively simple form…
We generalize the vacuum static black strings with negative cosmological constant recently discussed in literature, by including an electromagnetic field. These higher-dimensional configurations have no dependence on the `compact' extra…
We study cosmologies based on low-energy effective string theory with higher-order string corrections to a tree-level action and with a modulus scalar field (dilaton or compactification modulus). In the presence of such corrections it is…
We discuss different formulations and approaches to string theory and $ 2d$ quantum gravity. The generic idea to get a unique description of {\it many} different string vacua altogether is demonstrated on the examples in $ 2d$ conformal,…
In some string theories, e.g. SO(32) heterotic string theory on Calabi-Yau manifolds, a massless field with a tree level potential can acquire a tachyonic mass at the one loop level, forcing us to quantize the theory around a new background…
We investigate the spacetime of a spinning cosmic string in conformal invariant gravity, where the interior consists of a gauged scalar field. We find exact solutions of the exterior of a stationary spinning cosmic string, where we write…
I report on recent numerical simulations of the simplest field theory with cosmic string solutions, the Abelian Higgs model. We find that random networks of string quickly converge to a scaling solution in which the network scale length…
We extend the work done for cosmic strings on the perturbative calculation of vacuum polarization of a massless field in the space-time of multiple cosmic strings and show that for a more general class of locally flat metrics the one loop…
String theory, if it describes nature, is probably strongly coupled. In light of recent developments in string duality, this means that the ``real world'' should correspond to a region of the classical moduli space which admits no weak…
We review the existence, formation and properties of cosmic strings in string theory, the wide variety of observational techniques that are being employed to detect them, and the constraints that current observations impose on string theory…
The possible tensor constructions of open string theories are analyzed from first principles. To this end the algebraic framework of open string field theory is clarified, including the role of the homotopy associative A_\infty algebra, the…
We argue that traditional methods of compactification of string theory make it very difficult to understand how the cosmological constant becomes zero. String inspired models can give zero cosmological constant after fine tuning but since…
Motivated in part by string theory, we consider the idea that the standard LambdaCDM cosmological model might be modified by the effect of a long-range scalar dark matter interaction. The variant of this widely-discussed notion considered…
A brief overview of strings propagating on noncompact coset spaces G/H is presented in terms of WZW models. The role played by isometries in the existence of target space duality and by fixed points of the gauge transformations in the…