Related papers: Enhanced Gauge Symmetries in Superstring Theories
Type II string compactifications to 4d generically contain massless Ramond-Ramond U(1) gauge symmetries. However there is no massless matter charged under these U(1)'s, which makes a priori difficult to measure any physical consequences of…
We show that the same wrapping rules that have been derived for the branes of IIA and IIB string theory also apply to the branes of the toroidally compactified heterotic string theory. Moreover, we show that applying these wrapping rules to…
We obtain the Hamiltonian formulation of the 11D Supermembrane theory non-trivially compactified on a twice-punctured torus times a 9D Minkowski space-time. It corresponds to a M2-brane formulated in 11D space with ten non-compact…
We invoke probe brane arguments to classify the asymptotic behavior of general five-dimensional supergravity theories with eight supercharges near infinite distance boundaries of the vector multiplet moduli space. Imposing consistency of…
A bosonic sector of the four-dimensional low-energy heterotic string theory with two Abelian gauge fields is considered in the stationary case. A new 4X4 unitary null-curvature matrix representation of the theory is derived and the…
We study the phenomenology of the strong-coupling limit of $E_8\times E_8$ heterotic string obtained from M-theory, using a Calabi-Yau compactification. After summarizing the standard embedding results, we concentrate on non-standard…
By studying 2d string compactifications with half-maximal supersymmetry in a variety of duality frames, we find a natural physical setting for understanding Umbral moonshine. Near points in moduli space with enhanced gauge symmetry, we find…
We propose a novel string theory propagating in a non-commutative deformation of the four dimensional space T* T^2 whose scattering states correspond to superconformal theories in 5 dimensions and the scattering amplitudes compute…
We compare the logarithm of the degeneracy of BPS saturated elementary string states and the string modified Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of the corresponding black holes in N=2 supersymmetric heterotic string compactification to four…
We discuss non-conformal non-supersymmetric large N gauge theories with vanishing vacuum energy density to all orders in perturbation theory. These gauge theories can be obtained via a field theory limit of Type IIB D3-branes embedded in…
I explain two applications of the relationship between four dimensional N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories, zero dimensional gauged matrix models, and geometric transitions in string theory. The first is related to the spectrum of BPS domain…
We compute and analyse a variety of four-derivative gravitational terms in the effective action of six- and four-dimensional type II string ground states with N=4 supersymmetry. In six dimensions, we compute the relevant perturbative…
We study gauge symmetry in F-theory in light of global aspects. For this, we consider not only a simple (local) group, but also a semi-simple group with Abelian factors. Once we specify the complete gauge group by decomposing the…
We consider a compactification of 4D $\mathcal{N}=4$ SYM, with $SU(N)$ gauge group, on a circle with anti-periodic boundary conditions for the fermions. We couple the theory to a constant background gauge field along the circle for an…
We construct supersymmetric compactifications of E_8 \times E_8 heterotic string theory which realise exactly the massless spectrum of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) at low energies. The starting point is the standard…
We present four-dimensional M-theory vacua with N>0 supersymmetry which, from the perspective of perturbative Type IIA string theory, have N=0. Such vacua can appear when the compactifying 7-manifold is a U(1) fibration. The missing…
We analyze the scalar potentials of maximal gauged three-dimensional supergravities which reveal a surprisingly rich structure. In contrast to maximal supergravities in dimensions D>3, all these theories admit a maximally supersymmetric…
We study the physics of N=1 super Yang-Mills theory with gauge group U(Nc) and one adjoint Higgs field, by using the recently derived exact effective superpotentials. Interesting phenomena occur for some special values of the Higgs…
We study compactifications of string theory and M-theory to six dimensions with background fluxes. The nonzero fluxes lead to additional mass parameters. We derive the S- and T-duality rules for the corresponding (massive) supergravity…
The moduli space of flat connections for maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories, in a space-time of the form T^3xR, contains isolated points, corresponding to normalizable zero energy states, for certain simple gauge groups G. We…