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We review recent work which has significantly sharpened our geometric understanding and interpretation of the moduli space of certain $N$=2 superconformal field theories. This has resolved some important issues in mirror symmetry and has…
While the number of metastable landscape vacua in string theory is vast, the number of supermoduli vacua which lead to distinct low energy physics is even larger, perhaps infinitely so. From the anthropic perspective it is therefore…
Ideas about a duality between gauge fields and strings have been around for many decades. During the last ten years, these ideas have taken a much more concrete mathematical form. String descriptions of the strongly coupled dynamics of…
We define string geometry: spaces of superstrings including the interactions, their topologies, charts, and metrics. Trajectories in asymptotic processes on a space of strings reproduce the right moduli space of the super Riemann surfaces…
The current classification of $\mathcal{N} = 1$ string theories in eight and seven dimensions is completely captured by K3 surfaces with F-Theory or M-Theory frozen singularities. In this note we show that there are inequivalent ways of…
We study a class of extremal transitions between topological distinct Calabi--Yau manifolds which have an interpretation in terms of the special massless states of a type II string compactification. In those cases where a dual heterotic…
This is a review. Comments are welcome. The observation that the structure of string theory is rich enough to include the standard model in rough outline is an old one, starting with the early constructions of free field constructions,…
Superstring theories are very promising theoretically, but the enormous landscape of string vacua and the (likely) very large underlying string scale imply that they may never be tested directly. Nevertheless, concrete constructions…
We discuss heterotic string theories in two dimensions with gauge groups Spin(24) and Spin(8) x E_8. After compactification the theories exhibit a rich spectrum of states with both winding and momentum. At special points some of these…
String theoretical ideas might be relevant for particle physics model building. Ideally one would hope to find a unified theory of all fundamental interactions. There are only few consistent string theories in D=10 or 11 space-time…
Four-dimensional compactifications of string theory provide a controlled set of possible gauge representations accounting for BSM particles and dark sector components. In this review, constraints from perturbative Type II string…
String theory in two-dimensional spacetime illuminates two main threads of recent development in string theory: (1) Open/closed string duality, and (2) Tachyon condensation. In two dimensions, many aspects of these phenomena can be explored…
Stabilizing all of the modulus fields coming from compactifications of string theory on internal manifolds is one of the outstanding challenges for string cosmology. Here, in a simple example of toroidal compactification, we study the…
We discuss the moduli space of nine dimensional N=1 supersymmetric compactifications of M theory / string theory with reduced rank (rank 10 or rank 2), exhibiting how all the different theories (including M theory compactified on a Klein…
The recent developments in string theory suggest that the space-time coordinates should be generalized to non-commuting matrices. Postulating this suggestion as the fundamental geometrical principle, we formulate a candidate for covariant…
The strong coupling physics of two dimensional gravity at C=7, 13, 19 is deciphered, by building up on previous works along the same line (for a recent review, of the background material, see hep-th/9408069). It is shown that chirality…
String theory appears to admit a group of discrete field transformations -- called $S$ dualities -- as exact non-perturbative quantum symmetries. Mathematically, they are rather analogous to the better-known $T$ duality symmetries, which…
I argue that string theory compactified on a Riemann surface crosses over at small volume to a higher dimensional background of supercritical string theory. Several concrete measures of the count of degrees of freedom of the theory yield…
Within two specific string cosmology scenarios --differing in the way the pre- and post-big bang phases are joined-- we compute the size and spectral slope of various types of cosmologically amplified quantum fluctuations that arise in…
In the context of the field theory limit of superstrings, we consider an almost realistic model of supersymmetry breaking by gaugino condensation which includes, through nonperturbative corrections to the K\"ahler potential, dilaton…