Related papers: Strings below the Planck scale
String breaking is a central dynamical process in theories featuring confinement, where a string connecting two charges decays at the expense of the creation of new particle-antiparticle pairs. Here, we show that this process can also be…
We demonstrate that strings near the horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole, when viewed by a stationary observer at infinity, probe a string Carroll geometry, where the effective lightspeed is given by the distance from the horizon. We…
Is string theory uniquely determined by self-consistency? Causality and unitarity seemingly permit a multitude of putative deformations, at least at the level of two-to-two scattering. Motivated by this question, we initiate a systematic…
Effects of dispersion of the chromoelectric field of the flux tube on the string-breaking distance are studied. The leading-order correction is shown to slightly diminish the result following from the Schwinger formula. Instead, accounting…
We investigate the field theory of strings having as a target space an arbitrary discrete one-dimensional manifold. The existence of the continuum limit is guaranteed if the target space is a Dynkin diagram of a simply laced Lie algebra or…
We study different phenomenological aspects of compact, D=4, N=1 Type IIB orientifolds considered as models for unification of the standard model and gravity. We discuss the structure of the compactification, string and unification scales…
We propose an exotic geometric M-theory dual for the weak coupling Type 0A string: compactification on a sub-Planckian $S^1\vee S^1$ (two circles connected at a point), where strong quantum effects lead to fields living on distinct…
In six dimensions, cancellation of gauge, gravitational, and mixed anomalies strongly constrains the set of quantum field theories which can be coupled consistently to gravity. We show that for some classes of six-dimensional supersymmetric…
The quantization of circular strings in an anti-de Sitter background spacetime is performed, obtaining a discrete spectrum for the string mass. A comparison with a four-dimensional homogeneous and isotropic spacetime coupled to a conformal…
Superstring field theory gives expressions for heterotic and type II string loop amplitudes that are free from ultraviolet and infrared divergences when the number of non-compact space-time dimensions is five or more. We prove the…
We consider a class of spin systems on randomly triangulated surfaces as discrete approximations to conformal matter fields coupled to 2d gravity. On the basis of certain universality assumptions we argue that at critical points with…
This paper investigates the significance of T-duality in string theory: the indistinguishability with respect to all observables, of models attributing radically different radii to space -- larger than the observable universe, or far…
We test various conjectures about quantum gravity for six-dimensional string compactifications in the framework of F-theory. Starting with a gauge theory coupled to gravity, we analyze the limit in K\"ahler moduli space where the gauge…
We consider the effective action for strings and describe in detail the evolution of a four dimensional homogeneous isotropic universe with matter included. We find that the evolution, which is singular in general, becomes singularity free…
A long-standing puzzle about the heterotic string has been what happens when an instanton shrinks to zero size. It is argued here that the answer at the quantum level is that an extra $SU(2)$ gauge symmetry appears that is supported in the…
After presenting string-like solutions with a warp factor to Einstein's equations, we study localization of various spin fields on a string-like defect in a general space-time dimension from the viewpoint of field theory. It is shown that…
We analyze the single subleading soft graviton theorem in $(d+1)$ dimensions under compactification on $S^1$. This produces the single soft theorems for the graviton, vector and scalar fields in $d$ dimension. For the compactification of…
We examine the properties and symmetries of the lowest order effective theory of 4-dim string backgrounds with axion and dilaton fields and zero cosmological constant. The dimensional reduction yields an O(2,2) current group of…
Buscher duality is a sigma-model duality, implemented by transformation of the target space. Not only in the case of a flat target space, but in a general background, should the Buscher duality reduce to the T-duality familiar in the…
We review old and recent results on a special limit of string theory on AdS$_3\times M_7$ with pure NS-NS fluxes: the limit in which the string length $\ell_s=\sqrt{\alpha'}$ equals the AdS$_3$ radius $R $. At this point of the moduli…