Related papers: Issues on tadpoles and vacuum redefinitions in Str…
Tadpoles accompany, in one form or another, all attempts to realize supersymmetry breaking in String Theory, making the present constructions at best incomplete. Whereas these tadpoles are typically large, a closer look at the problem from…
While R-R tadpoles should be canceled for consistency, string models with broken supersymmetry generally have uncanceled NS-NS tadpoles. Their presence signals that the background does not solve the field equations, so that these models are…
We study the restrictions imposed by cancellation of the tadpoles for two, three, and four-form gauge fields in string theory, M-theory and F-theory compactified to two, three and four dimensions, respectively. For a large class of…
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…
Field redefinitions at string 1-loop order are often required by supersymmetry, for instance in order to make the K\"ahler structure of the scalar kinetic terms manifest. We derive the general structure of the field redefinitions and the…
We investigate the quantum structure of Witten's cubic open bosonic string field theory by computing the one-loop contribution to the open string tadpole using both oscillator and conformal field theory methods. We find divergences and a…
Superstring perturbation theory based on the 1PI effective theory approach has been useful for addressing the problem of mass renormalization and vacuum shift. We derive Ward identities associated with space-time supersymmetry…
We study tadpole potentials of non-supersymmetric strings, resorting to a first-order formalism known in the literature as fake supersymmetry. We present a detailed analysis for vacua with only gravity and the dilaton, displaying the…
String theory relies on spacetime supersymmetry to guarantee the existence of stable vacua. In this review, we survey two features of non-supersymmetric strings that challenge both aspects: the appearance of tachyons and worldsheet…
The consistency of string theory as a theory of gravity does not rely on the presence of spacetime supersymmetry; however, its absence leads to the emergence of tadpole diagrams in the on-shell worldsheet formulation, thus undermining our…
The purpose of this work is to show that there exists an additional invariance of the $\beta$-function equations of string theory on $d+1$-dimensional targets with $d$ toroidal isometries. It corresponds to a shift of the dilaton field and…
Supersymmetry breaking in string theory is expected to occur when moduli fields acquire non-trivial expectation values. In the early universe these fields start out displaced from their final destinations. I present some recent ideas about…
In this thesis we investigate some aspects of the dramatic consequences of supersymmetry breaking on string vacua. In particular, we focus on the issue of vacuum stability in ten-dimensional string models with broken, or without,…
We review several mechanisms for supersymmetry breaking in orientifold models. In particular, we focus on non-supersymmetric open-string realisations that correspond to consistent flat-space solutions of the classical equations of motion.…
Over the past three decades, considerable effort has been devoted to studying the rich and diverse phenomenologies of heterotic strings exhibiting spacetime supersymmetry. Unfortunately, during this same period, there has been relatively…
We discuss the obstacles for defining a set of observable quantities analogous to an S-matrix which are needed to formulate string theory in an accelerating universe. We show that the quintessence models with the equations of state $-1 < w…
We point out that some recently proposed string theory realizations of dynamical supersymmetry breaking actually do not break supersymmetry in the usual desired sense. Instead, there is a runaway potential, which slides down to a…
We review the main results of our investigations motivated by the tadpole potentials of ten-dimensional strings with broken supersymmetry. While these are at best partial indications, it is hard to resist the feeling that they do capture…
In some string theories, e.g. SO(32) heterotic string theory on Calabi-Yau manifolds, a massless field with a tree level potential can acquire a tachyonic mass at the one loop level, forcing us to quantize the theory around a new background…
Hyperbolic geometry on the one-bordered torus is numerically uniformized using Liouville theory. This geometry is relevant for the hyperbolic string tadpole vertex describing the one-loop quantum corrections of closed string field theory.…