Related papers: New Discrete States in Two-Dimensional Supergravit…
Over the last few years, string theory has changed profoundly. Most importantly, novel duality relations have emerged which involve gauge theories of brane excitations on one side and various closed string backgrounds on the other. In this…
We investigate dimensional constraints arising from representation theory when abstract graph edges possess internal degrees of freedom but lack geometric properties. We prove that such internal degrees of freedom can only encode…
We give examples of string compactifications to 4d Minkowski space with different amounts of supersymmetry that can be connected by spherical domain walls. The tension of these domain walls is tunably lower than the 4d Planck scale. The…
We consider a string theory with two types of strings with geometric interaction. We show that the theory contains strings with constant Dirichlet boundary condition and those strings are glued together by 2-d topological gravity with…
We investigate the space of consistent tree-level extensions of the maximal supergravities in ten dimensions. We parametrize theory space by the first few EFT coefficients and by the on-shell coupling of the lightest massive state, and…
These lectures begin by reviewing the evidence for S duality of the toroidally compactified heterotic string in 4d that was obtained in the period 1992--94. Next they review recently discovered dualities that relate all five of the 10d…
We extend the model of string as a polymer of string bits to the case of superstring. We mainly concentrate on type II-B superstring, with some discussion of the obstacles presented by not II-B superstring, together with possible strategies…
We spell out the derivation of novel features, put forward earlier in a letter, of two dimensional gravity in the strong coupling regime, at $C_L=7$, 13, 19. Within the operator approach previously developed, they neatly follow from the…
We construct new multi-field realisations of the $N=2$ super-$W_3$ algebra, which are important for building super-$W_3$ string theories. We derive the structure of the ghost vacuum for such theories, and use the result to calculate the…
Motivated by the long-term goal of finding holographic descriptions for ${\mathcal N}=1$ and ${\mathcal N}=2$ super QCD, we revisit the subject of ''noncritical'' superstring theory. Focusing on string models with 6d super Poincar\'e…
The S-duality transformations in type IIB string theory can be seen as local U(1) transformations in type IIB supergravity. We use this approach to construct the $SL(2,Z)$ multiplets associated to supersymmetric backgrounds of type IIB…
We discuss some recent attempts to reconcile cosmology with supergravity and M/string theory. First of all, we point out that in extended supergravities the scalar masses are quantized in terms of the cosmological constant in de Sitter…
We discuss type II and type I branes at general ADE type orbifold singularities. We show that there are new phases of type I or heterotic string theory in six dimensions, involving extra tensor multiplets, which arise when small instantons…
The massive non-relativistic free particle in d-1 space dimensions has an action with a surprizing non-linearly realized SO(d,2) symmetry. This is the simplest example of a host of diverse one-time-physics systems with hidden SO(d,2)…
We study the classical geometry associated to fractional D3-branes of type IIB string theory on R^4/Z_2 which provide the gravitational dual for N=2 super Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions. As one can expect from the lack of conformal…
This is the second in a series of papers devoted to open string field theory in two dimensions. In this paper we aim to clarify the origin and the role of discrete physical states in the theory. To this end, we study interactions of…
We consider the (2, 0) supersymmetric theory of tensor multiplets and self-dual strings in six space-time dimensions. Space-time diffeomorphisms that leave the string world-sheet invariant appear as gauge transformations on the normal…
In string bit models, the superstring emerges as a very long chain of "bits", in which s fermionic degrees of freedom contribute positively to the ground state energy in a way to exactly cancel the destabilizing negative contributions of…
We propose a string-theoretic ansatz describing the dynamics of SU(N) Yang-Mills theories in the limit of large N in D=4. The construction uses in a crucial way open-string vertex operators that describe non-perturbative brane dynamics.…
Beginning with a review of the arguments leading to the so-called c=1 barrier in the continuum formulation of noncritical string theory, the pathology is then exhibited in a discretized version of the theory, formulated through dynamical…