Related papers: Wrapping the M Theory Five-Brane on K3
We show that all three conditions for the cosmological relevance of heterotic cosmic strings, the right tension, stability and a production mechanism at the end of inflation, can be met in the strongly coupled M-theory regime. Whereas…
Heterotic string theory has nonsupersymmetric branes whose existence is suggested by the cobordism conjecture. We numerically construct static, spherically symmetric, and asymptotically flat black brane solutions in ten-dimensional…
We discuss low-energy heterotic M-theory with five-branes in four and five dimensions and its application to moving brane cosmology.
In a recent work, Tachikawa and Zhang proved the existence of a discrete topological term in the unique non-supersymmetric heterotic string with no tachyons in ten dimensions. This theory features NS5-branes, whose chiral degrees of freedom…
Five-branes lead in four dimensions to massless N=1 supermultiplets if M-theory is compactified on S1/Z2 x (a Calabi-Yau threefold). One of them describes the modulus associated with the position of the five-brane along the circle S1. We…
We study string theory propagating on R^6 times K3 by constructing orientifolds of Type IIB string theory compactified on the T^4/Z_N orbifold limits of the K3 surface. This generalises the Z_2 case studied previously. The orientifold…
We re-examine the question of heterotic - heterotic string duality in six dimensions and argue that the $E_8\times E_8$ heterotic string, compactified on $K3$ with equal instanton numbers in the two $E_8$'s, has a self-duality that inverts…
We present supersymmetric soliton solutions of the four-dimensional heterotic string corresponding to monopoles, strings and domain walls. These solutions admit the $D=10$ interpretation of a fivebrane wrapped around $5$, $4$ or $3$ of the…
Abelian gerbes and twisted bundles describe the topology of the NS-NS 3-form gauge field strength H. We review how they have been usefully applied to study and resolve global anomalies in open string theory. Abelian 2-gerbes and twisted…
In these lectures, we present cosmological vacuum solutions of Horava-Witten theory and discuss their physical properties. We begin by deriving the five-dimensional effective action of strongly coupled heterotic string theory by performing…
We study two M5-branes on $A_{1}$ ALE space. We introduce some M2-branes suspended between the M5-branes. Then, the boundaries of M2-branes look like strings. We call them "M-strings". The M-strings have $\mathcal{N}=(4,0)$ supersymmetry by…
After a short introduction to Matrix theory, we explain how can one generalize matrix models to describe toroidal compactifications of M-theory and the heterotic vacua with 16 supercharges. This allows us, for the first time in history, to…
M-theory can be defined on closed manifolds as well as on manifolds with boundary. As an extension, we show that manifolds with corners appear naturally in M-theory. We illustrate this with four situations: The lift to bounding twelve…
We analyze some phenomenological implications of heterotic M-theory with five-branes. Recent results for the effective 4-dimensional action are used to perform a systematic analysis of the parameter space, finding the restrictions that…
The kappa symmetry of an open M2-brane ending on an M5-brane requires geometrical constraints on the embedding of the system in target superspace. These constraints lead to the M5-brane equations of motion, which we review both in…
We discuss theories with 16 and 8 supercharges in 6 and 7 dimensions. These theories are defined as world-volume theories of 5- and 6-branes of type II and M theories, in the limit in which bulk modes decouple. We analyze in detail the…
We construct an action for NSNS 5-branes which is manifestly covariant under O(d,d). This is done by doubling $d$ of the spacetime coordinates which appear in the worldvolume action. By formulating the DBI part of the action in a manner…
The compactification of the heterotic string on six-dimensional orbifolds is reviewed. Some important technical aspects of their construction are clarified and new parameters, called generalized discrete torsion, are introduced and related…
We study two-dimensional SQED viewed as the world-volume theory of a D-string in the presence of D5-branes with non-zero background fields that induce attractive forces between the branes. In various approximations, the low-energy dynamics…
N=1 supersymmetric QCD is considered using the recently proposed picture of it as the world volume theory of a single M-theory fivebrane with two of its dimensions wrapped on a Riemann surface. The conditions under which a second M-theory…