Related papers: Membrane and fivebrane instantons and quaternonic …
We describe a simple class of type IIA string compactifications on Calabi-Yau manifolds where background fluxes generate a potential for the complex structure moduli, the dilaton, and the K\"ahler moduli. This class of models corresponds to…
We analyze the process of string vacuum destabilization due to instanton induced superpotential couplings which depend linearly on charged fields. These non-perturbative instabilities result in potentials for the D-brane moduli and lead to…
The $R^2 F^{2g-2}$ terms of Type IIA strings on Calabi-Yau 3-folds, which are given by the corresponding topological string amplitudes (a worldsheet instanton sum for all genera), are shown to have a simple M-theory interpretation. In…
We derive the stability conditions for the M5-brane in topological M-theory using kappa-symmetry. The non-linearly self-dual 3-form on the world-volume is necessarily non-vanishing, as is the case also for the 2-form field strengths on…
We construct a linear sigma model for open-strings ending on special Lagrangian cycles of a Calabi-Yau manifold. We illustrate the construction for the cases considered by Aganagic and Vafa in hep-th/0012041. This leads naturally to…
We consider type IIA compactification on $K3$. We show that the instanton subsectors of the worldvolume of $N$ 4-branes wrapped around $K3$ lead to a Hagedorn density of BPS states in accord with heterotic-type IIA duality in 6 dimensions.…
We investigate the instanton effect due to D3 branes wrapping a four-cycle in a Calabi-Yau orientifold with D7 branes. We study the condition for the nonzero superpotentials from the D3 instantons. For that matter we work out the zero mode…
In this note we construct large ensembles of supersymmetry breaking solutions arising in the context of flux compactifications of type IIB string theory. This class of solutions was previously proposed in arXiv:hep-th/0402135 for which we…
We outline the construction of metastable de Sitter vacua of type IIB string theory. Our starting point is highly warped IIB compactifications with nontrivial NS and RR three-form fluxes. By incorporating known corrections to the…
Lorentz-invariant expectation values for antisymmetric tensor field strengths in Calabi-Yau compactification of IIA string theory are considered. These are found to impart magnetic and/or electric charges to the dilaton hypermultiplet. This…
We consider systems of magnetized D9 branes on orbifolds supporting N=1 gauge theories. In such realizations, the matter multiplets arise from "twisted" strings connecting different stacks of branes. The introduction of Euclidean 5-branes…
In this thesis we discuss non-perturbative phenomena emerging in gauge and in string/supergravity theories. We compute the partition function of 5D minimal supersymmetric U(1) gauge theory with extra adjoint matter in general…
This thesis studies meta- and exactly stable supersymmetry breaking mechanisms in heterotic and type IIB string theories and constructs an F-theory Grand Unified Theory model for neutrino physics in which neutrino mass is determined by the…
We show that non-Spin cycles in type IIB Calabi-Yau orientifold compactifications with vanishing B field naturally support orientifold-invariant D-brane instantons. These instantons, associated to the holomorphic cotangent bundle of the…
We consider massive type IIA orientifold compactifications of the form AdS$_4 \times X_6$, where $X_6$ admits a Calabi-Yau metric and is threaded by background fluxes. From a 4d viewpoint, fluxes generate a potential whose vacua have been…
We propose, based on the viewpoint that our three-dimensional space is a stack of BPS D3-branes located at the conifold singularity of the Calabi-Yau three-fold, a new mechanism to address the cosmological constant problem in the framework…
This thesis explores an exotic class of M-theory compactifications in which the compact manifold is taken to be a Calabi-Yau five-fold. The resulting effective theory is a one-dimensional N=2 super-mechanics model that exhibits peculiar…
We investigate the effective worldvolume theories of branes in a background given by (the bosonic sector of) 10-dimensional massive IIA supergravity (``massive branes'') and their M-theoretic origin. In the case of the solitonic 5-brane of…
We study properties of flux vacua in type IIB string theory in several simple but illustrative models. We initiate the study of the relative frequencies of vacua with vanishing superpotential W=0 and with certain discrete symmetries. For…
We examine the effects of instantons in four dimensional N=1 supersymmetric gauge theory by including D0-branes in type IIA brane constructions. We examine instanton generated superpotentials in supersymmetric QCD and find that they are due…