Related papers: Effective supergravity descriptions of superstring…
We study anisotropic cosmology in Ho\v{r}ava's gravity theory and obtain Kasner type solutions, valid for any number d of spatial dimensions. The corresponding exponents satisfy two relations, one involving the marginal coupling \lambda.…
In these lecture notes we first assemble the basic ingredients of supersymmetric gauge theories (particularly N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory), supergravity, and superstring theory. Brane solutions are surveyed. The geometry and symmetries of…
We study the stability of supersymmetry breaking vacuum in the presence of cosmic strings arising in the messenger sector. For certain ranges of the couplings, the desired supersymmetry breaking vacua become unstable against decay into…
We revisit the classical theory of ten-dimensional two-derivative gravity coupled to fluxes, scalar fields, D-branes, anti D-branes and Orientifold-planes. We show that such set-ups do not give rise to a four-dimensional positive curvature…
String theory provides the only consistent framework so far that unifies all interactions including gravity. We discuss gravity and cosmology in string theory. Conventional notions from general relativity like geometry, topology etc. are…
We explain the need for a theory of quantum gravity and some general ideas about string theory, including the idea of the derivation of the Hawking Bekenstein entropy formula for extremal black holes. We then give a general description of…
We review the definition of (maximally supersymmetric) vacuum in supergravity theories, the currently known vacua in arbitrary dimensions and how the associated supersymmetry algebras can be found. (Invited talk at the Spanish Relativity…
Exceptional field theories are the manifestly duality covariant formulations of the target space theories of string/M-theory in the low-energy limit (supergravity) or for certain truncations. These theories feature a rich system of…
We study how two moduli can be stabilized in a Minkowski/de Sitter vacuum for a wide class of string-inspired Supergravity models with an effective Fayet-like Supersymmetry breaking. It is shown under which conditions this mechanism can be…
We review the development of understanding for the problem of ultraviolet divergences in supergravity. This history proceeds from initial constructions of counterterms invariant under the relevant degrees of local supersymmetry, through a…
A new heterotic N=2 string with manifest target space supersymmetry is constructed by combining a conventional N=2 string in the right-moving sector and a Green-Schwarz-Berkovits type string in the left-moving sector. The corresponding…
We review various aspects of de Sitter spacetime in string theory: its status as an effective field theory spacetime solution, its relation to the vacuum energy problem in string theory, its (global) holographic definition in terms of two…
In this review we show that a Clifford algebra possesses a unique irreducible representation; the spinor representation. We discuss what types of spinors can exist in Minkowski space-times and we explain how to construct all the…
String cosmology aims at providing a reliable description of the very early Universe in the regime where standard-model physics is no longer appropriate, and where we can safely apply the basic ingredients of superstring models such as…
The aim of these lectures is to give an introduction to several topics which lie at the intersection of string theory, gravity theory and gravity phenomenology. One successively reviews: (i) the "membrane" approach to the dissipative…
After a short introduction to Matrix theory, we explain how can one generalize matrix models to describe toroidal compactifications of M-theory and the heterotic vacua with 16 supercharges. This allows us, for the first time in history, to…
These are introductory lectures on the correspondence between SU(N) gauge theories and Superstring Theory in anti-de Sitter geometries (AdS). The subject combines a number of different topics, including supersymmetric field theory,…
On a historical note, we first describe the early superspace construction of counterterms in supergravity and then move on to a brief discussion of selected areas in string theory where higher order supergravity invariants enter the…
We develop a method for constructing metastable de Sitter vacua in N=1 supergravity models describing the no-scale volume moduli sector of Calabi-Yau string compactifications. We consider both heterotic and orientifold models. Our main…
In the first part of this paper we find supergravity solutions corresponding to branes on worldvolumes of the form $R^d \times \Sigma$ where $\Sigma$ is a Riemann surface. These theories arise when we wrap branes on holomorphic Riemann…