Related papers: Duality, Compactification, and $e^{-1/\lambda}$ Ef…
Heterotic string compactifications on a $K3$ surface $\mathfrak{S}$ depend on a choice of hyperk\"ahler metric, anti-self-dual gauge connection and Kalb-Ramond flux, parametrized by hypermultiplet scalars. The metric on hypermultiplet…
On compactification to six spacetime dimensions, the fundamental heterotic string admits as a soliton a dual string whose effective worldsheet action couples to the background fields of the dual formulation of six-dimensional supergravity.…
We study the noncritical two-dimensional heterotic string. Long fundamental strings play a crucial role in the dynamics. They cancel anomalies and lead to phase transitions when the system is compactified on a Euclidean circle. A careful…
We investigate membrane instanton effects in type IIA strings compactified on rigid Calabi-Yau manifolds. These effects contribute to the low-energy effective action of the universal hypermultiplet. In the absence of additional fivebrane…
We show that a class of torsional compactifications of the heterotic string are dual to conventional Kahler heterotic string compactifications. This observation follows from the recently proposed analogue of the c-map for the heterotic…
Target space duality (T duality), which interchanges Kaluza--Klein and winding-mode excitations of the compactified heterotic string, is realized as a symmetry of a world-sheet action. Axion-dilaton duality (S duality), a conjectured…
We study type IIA string theory compactified on Calabi-Yau fourfolds and heterotic string theory compactified on Calabi-Yau threefolds times a two-torus. We derive the resulting effective theories which have two space-time dimensions and…
We study compactifications of the $N=2$ 6D tensionless string on various complex two-folds down to two-dimensions. In the IR limit they become non-trivial conformal field theories in 2D. Using results of Vafa and Witten on the partition…
It is known that string theory compactifications leading to low energy effective theories with different chiral matter content ({\it e.g.} different numbers of standard model generations) are connected through phase transitions, described…
In this paper we begin revisiting the little string theories (LSTs) which govern the dynamics of the instantonic heterotic $E_8 \times E_8$ five-branes probing ALE singularities, building on and extending previous results on the subject by…
We discuss aspects of the heterotic string effective field theories in orbifold constructions of the heterotic string. We calculate the moduli dependence of threshold corrections to gauge couplings in (2,2) symmetric orbifold…
Three subjects are considered here: a self-dual non-critical string that appears in Type IIB superstring theory at points in ${\rm K3}$ moduli space where the Type IIA theory has extended gauge symmetry; a conformal field theory singularity…
We investigate membrane and fivebrane instanton effects in type IIA string theory compactified on rigid Calabi-Yau manifolds. These effects contribute to the low-energy effective action of the universal hypermultiplet, in four dimensional…
This is a very brief survey of some results in the geometry of string duality delivered at a lecture given at ICM 1998, Berlin. String Duality is the statement that one kind of string theory compactified on one space is equivalent in some…
We study the mass of the stable non-BPS state in type I / heterotic string theory compactified on a circle with the help of the interpolation formula between weak and strong coupling results. Comparison between the results at different…
We compute the gravitational coupling $F_1$ for IIA string theory on $K3 \times T^2$ and use string-string duality to deduce the corresponding term for heterotic string on $T^6$. The latter is an infinite sum of gravitational instanton…
It has recently been conjectured that the type IIA string theory compactified on K3 and the heterotic string theory compactified on a four dimensional torus describe identical string theories. The fundamental heterotic string can be…
We discuss compactifications of the heterotic string in the presence of background fluxes. Specifically we consider compactifications on T^6, T^5, K3 x T^2 and K3 x S^1 for which we derive the bosonic sector of the low energy effective…
We analyze N=2 (perturbative and non-perturbative) corrections to the effective theory in type I orbifold models where a dual heterotic description is available. These corrections may play an important role in phenomenological scenarios.…
We use local mirror symmetry in type IIA string compactifications on Calabi-Yau n+1 folds $X_{n+1}$ to construct vector bundles on (possibly singular) elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau n-folds Z_n. The interpretation of these data as valid…