Related papers: Topological strings and their physical application…
The subject of this thesis are various ways to construct four-dimensional quantum field theories from string theory. In a first part we study the generation of a supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, coupled to an adjoint chiral superfield,…
We study geometric transitions for topological strings on compact Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces in toric varieties. Large N duality predicts an equivalence between topological open and closed string theories connected by an extremal transition.…
We consider the geometric transition and compute the all-genus topological string amplitudes expressed in terms of Hopf link invariants and topological vertices of Chern-Simons gauge theory. We introduce an operator technique of…
In this paper we will discuss how cosmic strings can be used to bridge the gap between the local geometry of our spacetime model and the global topology. The primary tool is the theory of foliations and surfaces, and together with…
In this paper we study black hole and black string solutions in five dimensional N=2 supergravity theories arising from the compactification of M-theory on Calabi-Yau manifolds. In particular, we consider explicit examples of three…
We offer a derivation of the duality between the topological U(1) gauge theory on a Calabi-Yau 3-fold and the topological A-model on the same manifold. This duality was conjectured recently by Iqbal, Nekrasov, Okounkov, and Vafa. We deduce…
We consider the real topological string on certain non-compact toric Calabi-Yau three-folds X, in its physical realization describing an orientifold of type IIA on X with an O4-plane and a single D4-brane stuck on top. The orientifold can…
This thesis is concerned with the geometry of toroidal orbifolds and their applications in string theory. By resolving the orbifold singularities via blow-ups, one arrives at a smooth Calabi-Yau manifold. The systematic method to do so is…
We demonstrate the equivalence of all loop closed topological string amplitudes on toric local Calabi-Yau threefolds with computations of certain knot invariants for Chern-Simons theory. We use this equivalence to compute the topological…
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…
After a brief introduction into the use of Calabi--Yau varieties in string dualities, and the role of toric geometry in that context, we review the classification of toric Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces and present some results on complete…
Supersymmetric closed string theories contain an infinite tower of BPS-saturated, oscillating, macroscopic strings in the perturbative spectrum. When these theories have dual formulations, this tower of states must exist nonperturbatively…
We consider topological closed string theories on Calabi-Yau manifolds which compute superpotential terms in the corresponding compactified type II effective action. In particular, near certain singularities we compare the partition…
We obtain exact results in \alpha' for open and closed A-model topological string amplitudes on a large class of toric Calabi-Yau threefolds by using their correspondence with five dimensional gauge theories. The toric Calabi-Yau's that we…
I present a new class of topological string theories, and discuss them in two dimensions as candidates for the string description of large-$N$ QCD. The starting point is a new class of topological sigma models, whose path integral is…
Superstrings and topological strings with supermanifolds as target space play a central role in the recent developments in string theory. Nevertheless the rules for higher-genus computations are still unclear or guessed in analogy with…
We give an elementary introduction to black holes in supergravity and string theory. The focus is on BPS solutions in four- and higher-dimensional supergravity and string theory. Basic ideas and techniques are explained in detail, including…
In these lecture notes for the Les Houches School on Quantum Geometry I give an introductory overview of non-perturbative aspects of topological string theory. After a short summary of the perturbative aspects, I first consider the…
We use mirror symmetry to establish the first concrete arena of spacetime topology change in string theory. In particular, we establish that the {\it quantum theories} based on certain nonlinear sigma models with topologically distinct…
We investigate how topological entanglement of Chern-Simons theory is captured in a string theoretic realization. Our explorations are motivated by a desire to understand how quantum entanglement of low energy open string degrees of freedom…