Related papers: From Loop Space Mechanics to Nonabelian Strings
In this easy introduction to higher gauge theory, we describe parallel transport for particles and strings in terms of 2-connections on 2-bundles. Just as ordinary gauge theory involves a gauge group, this generalization involves a gauge…
The most general gauge-invariant marginal deformation of four-dimensional abelian BF-type topological field theory is studied. It is shown that the deformed quantum field theory is topological and that its observables compute, in addition…
Many physical theories, including notably string theory, require non-abelian higher gauge fields defining higher holonomy. Previous approaches to such higher connections on categorified principal bundles require these to be fake flat. This…
Our main aim is to associate a holonomy Lie groupoid to the connective structure of an abelian gerbe. The construction has analogies with a procedure for the holonomy Lie groupoid of a foliation, in using a locally Lie groupoid and a…
In this paper, we develop the mathematical formulation of metric string structures. These play a crucial role in the formulation of certain six-dimensional superconformal field theories and we believe that they also underlie potential…
Cobordism offers a unique perspective into the non-perturbative sector of string theory by demanding the absence of higher form global symmetries for quantum gravitational consistency. In this work we compute the spin cobordism groups of…
We embed the large N Chern-Simons/topological string duality in ordinary superstrings. This corresponds to a large $N$ duality between generalized gauge systems with N=1 supersymmetry in 4 dimensions and superstrings propagating on…
We propose an open/closed string duality in general backgrounds extending previous ideas about open string completeness by Ashoke Sen. Our proposal sets up a general version of holography that works in gravity as a tomographic principle. We…
The notion of {\it generalised structure groups} and {\it generalised holonomy groups} has been introduced in supergravity, in order to discuss the spinor rotations generated by commutators of supercovariant derivatives when non-vanishing…
Supergravity provides the effective field theories for string compactifications. The deformation of the maximal supergravities by non-abelian gauge interactions is only possible for a restricted class of charges. Generically these…
We find the terms in the nonabelian world-volume action of a system of many Dp-branes which describe the leading coupling to all type II supergravity background fields. These results are found by T-dualizing earlier results for D0-branes,…
We consider various generalisations of the string class of a loop group bundle. The string class is the obstruction to lifting a bundle whose structure group is the loop group $LG$ to one whose structure group is the Kac-Moody central…
Non-geometric frames in string theory are related to the geometric ones by certain local O(D,D) transformations, the so-called $\beta$-transforms. For each such transformation, we show that there exists both a natural field redefinition of…
Through their respective sigma models, a bosonic string and a superstring can be coupled to (super)gravity fields. These are subsequently forced to satisfy their right classical equation of motions, as a consequence of quantization of the…
These lectures present some topics of string phenomenology and contain two parts. In the first part, I review the possibility of lowering the string scale in the TeV region, that provides a theoretical framework for solving the mass…
The $\mathcal{A}$-theory takes U-duality symmetry as a guiding principle, with the SL(5) U-duality symmetry being described as the world-volume theory of a 5-brane. Furthermore, by unifying the 6-dimensional world-volume Lorentz symmetry…
In this paper, nonholonomic gerbes will be naturally derived for manifolds and vector bundle spaces provided with nonintegrable distributions (in brief, nonholonomic spaces). An important example of such gerbes is related to distributions…
We give a complete and explicit description of the kinematical data of higher gauge theory on principal 2-bundles with the string 2-group model of Schommer-Pries as structure 2-group. We start with a self-contained review of the weak…
A geometric string solution has background fields in overlapping coordinate patches related by diffeomorphisms and gauge transformations, while for a non-geometric background this is generalised to allow transition functions involving…
It is proved that a basic superembedding equation for the 2-dimensional worldsheet superspace $\S^{(2|8+8)}$ embedded into D=10 type IIB superspace $M^{(10|16+16)}$ provides a universal, S-duality invariant description of a fundamental…