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We consider vacuum tunneling of a new kind where the false vacua are not translationally invariant, but have topological defects that break some of their translational symmetries. In the particular case where the topological defects are…
We sketch the main steps of old covariant quantization of bosonic open strings in a constant $B$ field background. We comment on its space-time symmetries and the induced effective metric. The low-energy spectrum is evaluated and the…
E_{8} X E_{8} heterotic string and M-theory, when compactified on smooth Calabi-Yau manifolds with SU(4) vector bundles, can give rise to softly broken N=1 supersymmetric theories with the exact matter spectrum of the MSSM, including three…
We present a cosmological landscape where the classical closed string tachyon field plays an important role in the framework of a critical bosonic compactification. Our cosmological solutions for a universe with constant curvature describes…
We show that quantum systems of extended objects naturally give rise to a large class of exotic phases - namely topological phases. These phases occur when the extended objects, called ``string-nets'', become highly fluctuating and…
To help focus ideas regarding possible routes to the breakdown of Lorentz invariance, it is extremely useful to explore concrete physical models that exhibit similar phenomena. In particular, acoustics in Bose--Einstein condensates has the…
We study the action of the BMS group in critical, bosonic string theory living on a target space of the form $\mathbb{M}^{d}\times C$. Here $M^{d}$ is $d$-dimensional (asymptotically) flat spacetime and $C$ is an arbitrary compactification.…
We study supersymmetry breaking by Scherk-Schwarz compactifications in type I string theory. While in the gravitational sector all mass splittings are proportional to a (large) compactification radius, supersymmetry remains unbroken for the…
We compute the two-loop contributions to the free energy in the null compactification of perturbative string theory at finite temperature. The cases of bosonic, Type II and heterotic strings are all treated. The calculation exploits an…
The space-time dimensions transverse to a static straight cosmic string with a sufficiently large tension (supermassive cosmic strings) are compact and typically have a singularity at a finite distance form the core. In this paper, we…
We establish a precise formal correspondence between a spinless p-wave chiral fermionic superfluid and a spinless bosonic superfluid in a strong magnetic field by correctly accounting for superfluid vorticity in the effective theory of the…
An approach that allows studying the relationship between the neutralization of the cosmological constant and instantons for cosmology coupled to antisymmetric fields is proposed. Using suitable variables, the Lagrangian leading to the FRW…
We show that an ultra-cold atomic cloud bouncing on an oscillating mirror can reveal spontaneous breaking of a discrete time translation symmetry. In many-body simulations we illustrate the process of the symmetry breaking that can be…
We propose a mechanism to break the translational invariance of compactified space spontaneously. As a simple model, we study a real $\phi^4$ model compactified on $M^{D-1}\otimes S^1$ in detail, where we impose a nontrivial boundary…
We study conformal gravity as an alternative theory of gravitation. For conformal gravity to be phenomenologically viable requires that the conformal symmetry is not manifest at the energy scales of the other known physical forces. Hence we…
We propose a novel mechanism of spontaneous supersymmetry breaking which relies upon an ubiquitous feature of Quantum Field Theory, vacuum condensates. Such condensates play a crucial r\^{o}le in many phenomena. Examples include Unruh…
We argue that orientable open string theory without GSO projection has N=2 space-time supersymmetry in a spontaneously broken phase. The arguments are presented both in Neveu-Schwarz-Ramond and Green-Schwarz formulations. The formal but…
Analysing closed string tachyon condensation will improve our understanding of spacetime in string theory. We study the string spectrum on a BTZ black hole spacetime supported by NS-NS flux, which provides a calculable example where we…
Spontaneous Lorentz violation is a viable mechanism to look for Planck scale physics. In this work, we study spontaneous Lorentz violation models, in flat spacetime, where a vector field produces such a violation and matter is modeled by a…
The Kaluza-Klein linear dilaton background of the bosonic string and the Scherk-Schwarz linear dilaton background of the superstring are shown to be unstable to the decay of half of spacetime. The decay proceeds via a condensation of a…