Related papers: Is There a String Theory Landscape: Some Cautionar…

In string theory the coupling ``constants'' appearing in the low-energy effective Lagrangian are determined by the vacuum expectation values of some (a priori) massless scalar fields (dilaton, moduli). This naturally leads one to expect a…

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…

String theory avoids the ultraviolet infinities that arise in trying to quantize gravity. It is also more predictive than conventional quantum field theory, one aspect of this being the way that it contributed to the emergence of the…

Three subjects are considered here: a self-dual non-critical string that appears in Type IIB superstring theory at points in ${\rm K3}$ moduli space where the Type IIA theory has extended gauge symmetry; a conformal field theory singularity…

The string landscape accommodates a broad range of possible effective field theories. This poses a challenge for extracting verifiable predictions as well as falsifiable signatures of string theory. Motivated by these considerations, in…

The string theory landscape consists of many metastable de Sitter vacua, populated by eternal inflation. Tunneling between these vacua gives rise to a dynamical system, which asymptotically settles down to an equilibrium state. We…

Cosmic strings are predicted by many field-theory models, and may have been formed at a symmetry-breaking transition early in the history of the universe, such as that associated with grand unification. They could have important…

I discuss some current thoughts on how low-energy measurements and consistency constrain theories at high energies with emphasis on string theory. I also discuss some recent work on the dynamics of supersymmetric gauge theories.

We make a number of conjectures about the geometry of continuous moduli parameterizing the string landscape. In particular we conjecture that such moduli are always given by expectation value of scalar fields and that moduli spaces with…

If the results of the first LHC run are not betraying us, many decades of particle physics are culminating in a complete and consistent theory for all non-gravitational physics: the Standard Model. But despite this monumental achievement…

We argue that the vast majority of flux vacua with small cosmological constant are unstable to rapid decay to a big crunch. Exceptions are states with large compactification volume and supersymmetric and approximately supersymmetric states.…

In a recent paper [1] we showed that N=1 supersymmetric QCD in the presence of certain superpotential deformations has a rich landscape of supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric vacua. In this paper we embed this theory in string theory as a…

Is perturbative stability intimately tied with the existence of spacetime fermions in string theory in more than two dimensions? Type 0'B string theory in ten-dimensional flat space is a rare example of a non-tachyonic, non-supersymmetric…

We argue that in the context of string theory a large number N of connected degenerate vacua that mix will lead to a ground state with much lower energy, essentially because of the standard level repulsion of quantum theory for the…

Four-particle tree-level scattering amplitudes in string theory are magically consistent with unitarity, reflected in the non-trivial fact that beneath the critical dimension, the residues of the amplitudes on massive poles can be expanded…

We investigate the field theory of strings having as a target space an arbitrary discrete one-dimensional manifold. The existence of the continuum limit is guaranteed if the target space is a Dynkin diagram of a simply laced Lie algebra or…

We describe some recent progress in understanding and formulating string theory which is based on extensive studies of strings in lower (D=2) dimension. At the center is a large $W_{\infty}$ symmetry that appears most simply in the matrix…

The implications of string theory for understanding the dimension of uncompactified spacetime are investigated. Using recent ideas in string cosmology, a new model is proposed to explain why three spatial dimensions grew large. Unlike the…

Motivated by recent discussions of the string-theory landscape, we propose field-theoretic realizations of models with large numbers of vacua. These models contain multiple U(1) gauge groups, and can be interpreted as deconstructed versions…

String theory is the leading candidate for a unified theory of the standard model and gravity. In the last few years theorists have realized that there is a unique structure underlying string theory. In this unification a prominent role is…