Related papers: M-theory and Characteristic Classes
Recent developments involving strongly coupled superstrings are discussed from a phenomenological point of view. In particular, strongly coupled $E_8\times E'_8$ is described as an appropriate long-wavelength limit of M-theory, and some…
I review the construction of an action for open superstring field theory which does not suffer from the contact term problems of other approaches. I also discuss a possible generalization of this action for closed superstring field theory.
We present an intelligible review of recent results concerning cyclic cocycles in the spectral action and one-loop quantization. We show that the spectral action, when perturbed by a gauge potential, can be written as a series of…
The role played by Deligne-Beilinson cohomology in establishing the relation between Chern-Simons theory and link invariants in dimensions higher than three is investigated. Deligne-Beilinson cohomology classes provide a natural abelian…
We examine Chern-Simons theory as a deformation of a 3-dimensional BF theory that is partially holomorphic and partially topological. In particular, we introduce a novel gauge that leads naturally to a one-loop exact quantization of this BF…
In this paper we discuss the principles of measuring topological charge or representation traveling in the set of anyons. We describe the procedure and analyze how it works for the different values of parameters of the theory. We also show…
Based on a model of the d=3 SU(2) pure gauge theory vacuum as a monopole-vortex condensate, we give a quantitative (if model-dependent) estimate of the relation between the string tension and a gauge-invariant measure of the Chern-Simons…
We discuss the possible applications of string theory for the construction of generalizations of the $SU(3)\times SU(2)\times U(1)$ standard model of strong and electroweak interactions. This includes an investigation of effective $d=4$…
The talk contains a brief introduction string theory, followed by a discussion of some of the recent developments.
In this paper we continue the study of the non-critical type 0 string and its field theory duals. We begin by reviewing some facts and conjectures about these theories. We move on to our proposal for the type 0 effective action in any…
We study orbifold group actions on locally defined fields upon M-theory branes in a three-form C-fields background. We derive some constraints from the consistency of the orbifold group actions. We show the possibility of the existence of…
A supercharacter theory for a finite group $G$ is a set of superclasses each of which is a union of conjugacy classes together with a set of sums of irreducible characters called supercharacters that together satisfy certain compatibility…
In discussing the construction of a consistent theory of quantum gravity unified with the gauge interactions we are naturally led to a string theory. We review its properties and the five consistent supersymmetric string theories in ten…
We discuss theories containing higher-order forms in various dimensions. We explain how Chern--Simons-type theories of forms can be defined from TQFTs in one less dimension. We also exhibit new TQFTs with interacting Yang--Mills fields and…
We consider topological twisting of recently constructed Chern-Simons-matter theories in three dimensions with N=4 or higher supersymmetry. We enumerate physically inequivalent twistings for each N, and find two different twistings for N=4,…
We derive a topological action that describes the confining phase of (Super-)Yang-Mills theories with gauge group $SU(N)$, similar to the work recently carried out by Seiberg and collaborators. It encodes all the Aharonov-Bohm phases of the…
Some gauge theories with Coulomb branches exhibit singularities in perturbation theory, which are usually resolved by nonperturbative physics. In string theory this corresponds to the resolution of timelike singularities near the core of…
The automorphism groups of several of Thompson's countable groups of piecewise linear homeomorphisms of the line and circle are computed and it is shown that the outer automorphism groups of these groups are relatively small. These results…
In a recent paper, Polchinski and Strassler found a string theory dual of a gauge theory with reduced supersymmetry. Motivated by their approach, we perturb the $\N=8$ theory living on a set of N M2 branes to $\N=2$, by adding fermion mass…
Let A be an essential complex hyperplane arrangement in an n-dimensional complex vector space V. Let H denote the union of the hyperplanes, and M denote the complement to H in V. We develop the real-valued and circle-valued Morse theory for…