Related papers: TASI 2003 Lectures on Anomalies
Superstring/M-theory compactified on compact Ricci flat manifolds have recently been conjectured to exhibit instabilities whenever the metrics do not have special holonomy. We use worldsheet conformal field theory to investigate…
A very quick introduction to the bosonic string, conformal field theory, the superstring and geometry. No background in quantum field theory is assumed and the omissions are vast. Based on four lectures at the 2024 Physical Mathematics of…
Much has been learned about string theory over the last few years by studying properties of cycles and branes in a given background geometry. Here we discuss three situations (quantum volume, attractor flows/D-brane stability, and dynamical…
String theories with branes can often be generalized by adding brane-antibrane pairs. We explore the cancellation of anomalies in this more general context, extending the familiar anomaly-cancelling mechanisms, both for ten-dimensional…
These are lecture notes mainly aimed at graduate students on selected aspects of generalized geometry: in particular generalized complex and Kaehler structures and generalized holomorphic bundles. They are based on lectures given in March…
These notes are based on lectures given at the Les Houches Summer School in 2011, which was centered on the general topic "Theoretical Physics to face the challenge of LHC". In these lectures I reviewed a number of topics in the field of…
We review aspects of spacetime singularities from the view point of string theory. Examples considered include cosmological, cosmic string and black-hole singularities. We also discuss the consistency of viewing black-holes as excited…
We review the recent studies of tachyon condensation in string field theory. After introducing the open string field theory both for bosonic string and for superstring, we use them to examine the conjecture that the unstable configurations…
We give an introduction to the structure theory of extended affine Lie algebras, which provide a common framework for finite-dimensional semisimple, affine and toroidal Lie algebras. The notes are based on a lecture series given during the…
Compact spatial dimension at the TeV scale remain an intriguing possibility that is currently being tested at the LHC. We give an introductory review of extra-dimensional models and ideas, from a phenomenological perspective, but…
Recent developments in string theory have important implications for cosmology. Topics discussed here are inflation, the cosmological constant, smoothing of cosmological singularities, and dark matter from parallel universes. Talk presented…
In these lectures we review the quantum physics of large Schwarzschild black holes. Hawking's information paradox, the theory of the stretched horizon and the principle of black hole complementarity are covered. We then discuss how the…
Lectures on the construction on the moduli space of principal bundles, given in the Mini-School on Moduli Spaces at the Banach center (Warsaw) 26-30 April 2005.
String theory on curved backgrounds has received much attention on account of both its own interest, and of its relation with gauge theories. Despite the progress made in various directions, several quite elementary questions remain…
These notes are based on the lectures that one of us (HT) gave at the Summer School on the "Theory of Large Deviations and Applications", held in July 2024 at Les Houches in France. They present the basic definitions and mathematical…
We review some recent developments in the understanding of field theories in the perturbative regime. In particular, we discuss the notions of analyticity, unitarity and locality, and therefore the singularity structure of scattering…
These lecture notes (from the Second Autumn School in High Energy Physics and Quantum Field Theory, Yerevan 2014) cover a number of topics related to geometric quantization. Most of the material is presented from a physicist's point of…
These notes provide an elementary (and incomplete) sketch of the objects and ideas involved in monstrous and umbral moonshine. They were the basis for a plenary lecture at the 18th International Congress on Mathematical Physics, and for a…
These lectures provide an introduction to the subject of tachyon condensation in the open bosonic string. The problem of tachyon condensation is first described in the context of the low-energy Yang-Mills description of a system of multiple…
We investigate the anomalous triangle singularity (ATS) and its possible manifestations in various processes. We show that the ATS should have important impact on our understanding of the nature of some newly observed threshold states.…