Related papers: Superstring Compactification and Target Space Dual…
Motivated by the work of Polchinski and Strominger on type IIA theory, where the effect of non-trivial field strengths for p-form potentials on a Calabi-Yau space was discussed, we study four-dimensional heterotic string theory in the…
We describe a new class of supersymmetric string compactifications to 4d Minkowski space. These solutions involve type II strings propagating on (orientifolds of) non Calabi-Yau spaces in the presence of background NS and RR fluxes. The…
We investigate quantum corrections to the classical four-dimensional low-energy effective action of type II string theory compactified on SU(3) structure geometries. Various methods previously developed for Calabi-Yau compactifications are…
We review cosmological solutions of type II superstrings and M-theory, emphasizing the role of non-vanishing Ramond form backgrounds. Compactifications on flat and, more generally, maximally symmetric spatial subspaces are presented. We…
This article is devoted to an overview of superstring perturbation theory from the point of view of super Riemann surfaces. We aim to elucidate some of the subtleties of superstring perturbation that caused difficulty in the early…
We give a short review of a large class of warped string geometries, obtained via F-theory compactified on Calabi-Yau fourfolds, that upon reduction to 5 dimensions give consistent supersymmetric realizations of the RS compactification…
These notes are aimed at mathematicians working on topics related to mirror symmetry, but are unfamiliar with the physical origins of this subject. We explain the physical concepts that enable this surprising duality to exist, using the…
A rich pattern of gauge symmetries is found in the moduli space of heterotic string toroidal compactifications, at fixed points of the T-duality transformations. We analyze this pattern for generic tori, and scrutinize in full detail…
F-theory compactifications on Calabi-Yau fivefolds give rise to two-dimensional N=(0,2) supersymmetric field theories coupled to gravity. We explore the dilaton supergravity defined by the moduli sector of such compactifications. The…
We discuss a duality of (0,2) heterotic string vacua which implies that certain pairs of (0,2) Calabi-Yau compactifications on topologically distinct target manifolds yield identical string theories. Some complex structure moduli in one…
A large class of new 4-D superstring vacua with non-trivial/singular geometries, spacetime supersymmetry and other background fields (axion, dilaton) are found. Killing symmetries are generic and are associated with non-trivial dilaton and…
We review the applications of mirror symmetry to the study of the moduli spaces of two-dimensional conformal field theories with $N{=}(2,2)$ supersymmetry, particularly those constructed from Calabi--Yau manifolds. (Lecture delivered at the…
If $X$ and $Y$ are a mirror pair of Calabi--Yau threefolds, mirror symmetry should extend to an isomorphism between the type IIA string theory compactified on $X$ and the type IIB string theory compactified on $Y$, with all nonperturbative…
We study the hypermultiplet moduli space of the type II string compactified on a Calabi-Yau space $\bX$. We do this by using IIA/IIB duality in a compactification of the same theory on $\bX\times \bS ^1$ and by using recent results on three…
The recent result of Strominger, Yau and Zaslow relating mirror symmetry to the quantum field theory notion of T-duality is reinterpreted as providing a way of geometrically characterizing which Calabi-Yau manifolds have mirror partners.…
A recently introduced framework for the compactification of supersymmetric string theory involving noncritical manifolds of complex dimension $2k+D_{crit}$, $k\geq 1$, is reviewed. These higher dimensional manifolds are spaces with…
Calabi-Yau spaces, or Kahler spaces admitting zero Ricci curvature, have played a pivotal role in theoretical physics and pure mathematics for the last half-century. In physics, they constituted the first and natural solution to…
We construct spacetime supersymmetric, modular invariant partition functions of strings on the conifold-type singularities which include contributions from the discrete-series representations of SL(2, R). The discrete spectrum is…
We show how enhanced gauge symmetry in type II string theory compactified on a Calabi--Yau threefold arises from singularities in the geometry of the target space. When the target space of the type IIA string acquires a genus $g$ curve $C$…
In string theory it is known that abelian isometries in the sigma model lead to target space duality. We generalize this duality to backgrounds with non--abelian isometries. The procedure we follow consists of gauging the isometries of the…