Related papers: Comments on Cosmological Singularities in String T…
We consider twisted tachyons on C/Z_N orbifolds of bosonic closed string theory. It has been conjectured that these tachyonic instabilities correspond to decays of the orbifolds into flat space or into orbifolds with smaller deficit angles.…
Conformal Field Theory in a Minkowski setting is discussed in an embedding space approach, paying special attention to causality constraints for four-point amplitudes. The physics of dilatation and Lorentz boost is emphasized in specifying…
In this talk we discuss the cosmic singularity. We motivate the need to correct general relativity in the study of singularities, and mention the kind of corrections provided by string theory. We review how string theory resolves time-like…
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…
The first part of this review tries to provide a self-contained view of supersymmetry breaking from the bottom-up perspective. We thus describe N=1 supersymmetry in four dimensions, the Standard Model and the MSSM, with emphasis on the…
Global U(1) strings with cylindrical symmetry are studied in anti-de Sitter spacetime. According as the magnitude of negative cosmological constant, they form regular global cosmic strings, extremal black cosmic strings and charged black…
In this paper we continue our investigation of superstring scattering amplitudes in the conformal basis. We focus on the case of four graviton scattering processes at 1-loop in \emph{closed} superstring theory. We write the expression for…
The cosmological constant problem is turned around to argue for a new foundational physics postulate underlying a consistent quantum theory of gravity and matter, such as string theory. This postulate is a quantum equivalence principle…
In this letter a new class of twisted strings is presented, with an asymmetry between the holomorphic and antiholomorphic sectors parametrized by an integer $N$. Their physical content is given by the massless resonances of the closed…
We construct a quadratic curvature theory of gravity whose graviton propagator around the Minkowski background respects wordline inversion symmetry, the particle approximation to modular invariance in string theory. This symmetry…
The construction of amplitudes on curved space-times is a major challenge, particularly when the background has non-constant curvature. We give formulae for all tree-level graviton scattering amplitudes in curved self-dual radiative…
These are notes of a series of lectures on mirror symmetry and topological string theory given at the Mathematical Sciences Center at Tsinghua University. The N=2 superconformal algebra, its deformations and its chiral ring are reviewed. A…
In this paper, we study the zeros of string theory utilizing its curve-integral representation. Firstly, we note that for bosonic strings the tachyon amplitude in curve-representation is identical to the kinematic shifted Tr$\phi^3$…
We study the spectrum of $W_3$ strings. In particular, we show that for appropriately chosen space-time signature, one of the scalar fields is singled out by the spin-3 constraint and is ``frozen'': no creation operators from it can appear…
We study loop corrections to positivity bounds on effective field theories in the context of $2\to 2$ scattering in gravitational theories, in the presence of light particles. It has been observed that certain negative contributions at low…
When supersymmetry is spontaneously broken at tree level, the spectrum of the heterotic string compactified on orbifolds of tori contains an infinite number of potentially tachyonic modes. We show that this implies instabilities of…
We use D-instantons to probe the geometry of Misner universe, and calculate the world volume field theory action, which is of the 1+0 dimensional form and highly non-local. Turning on closed string tachyons, we see from the deformed moduli…
The classical dynamics of the tachyon scalar field of cubic string field theory is considered on a cosmological background. Starting from a nonlocal action with arbitrary tachyon potential, which encodes the bosonic and several…
Cosmic (super)strings offer promising ways to test ideas about the early universe and physics at high energies. While in field theory constructions their tension is usually assumed to be constant (or at most slowly-varying), this is often…
By promoting an invariant subgroup $H$ of $ISO(2,1)$ to a gauge symmetry of a WZWN action, we obtain the description of a bosonic string moving either in a curved 4-dimensional space--time with an axion field and curvature singularities or…