Related papers: Non-Supersymmetric Open String Vacua
In recent work Kachru, Kumar and Silverstein introduced a special class of non-supersymmetric type II string theories in which the cosmological constant vanishes at the first two orders of perturbation theory. Heuristic arguments suggest…
We study the cosmological constant problem in a three-dimensional N=2 supergravity theory with gauge group SU[2]_{global}xU[1]_{local}. The model we consider is known to admit string-like configurations, the so-called semi-local cosmic…
Supersymmetric vacua are protected from vacuum decay by energy positivity. No such argument is known for any non-supersymmetric vacua. In this paper, we try to extend to the latter a simpler argument based on calibrations, to at least…
We consider heterotic string backgrounds in four-dimensional Minkowski space, where N=1 supersymmetry is spontaneously broken at a low scale m_{3/2} by a stringy Scherk-Schwarz mechanism. We review how the effective gauge couplings at…
We show how chiral type I models whose tadpole conditions have no supersymmetric solution can be consistently defined introducing antibranes with non-supersymmetric world volumes. At tree level, the resulting stable non-BPS configurations…
We apply the well-known Scherk-Schwarz supersymmetry breaking mechanism in an open string context. We construct a new Z_3\times Z_3^\prime model, containing only D9-branes, and rederive from a more geometric perspective the known…
Phenomenologically viable string vacua may require incorporating Kac-Moody algebras at level $\geq 2$. We exploit the free fermionic formulation to construct N=(0,2) world-sheet supersymmetric string models with specific phenomenological…
We study some cases in D=4 and in infinite-volume high dimensional theories when unbroken supersymmetry in the vacuum cannot guarantee Fermi-Bose degeneracy among excited states. In 4D we consider an example in which both supersymmetry and…
We consider a recent proposal to solve the cosmological constant problem within the context of brane world scenarios with infinite volume extra dimensions. In such theories bulk can be supersymmetric even if brane supersymmetry is…
We analyze the moduli space of spontaneously broken N=8 supergravity theories in 4 dimensions with classical Minkowski vacua. We find that all the known classical vacua, as well as the several new ones we construct here, can be connected by…
We argue that traditional methods of compactification of string theory make it very difficult to understand how the cosmological constant becomes zero. String inspired models can give zero cosmological constant after fine tuning but since…
N=1 no-scale models describe at tree level the spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry at an arbitrary scale m_{3/2}, with vanishing vacuum energy. We define N=1 super no-scale models in string theory as being those, which maintain these…
Motivated by recent discussions of the string-theory landscape, we propose field-theoretic realizations of models with large numbers of vacua. These models contain multiple U(1) gauge groups, and can be interpreted as deconstructed versions…
Dynamical supersymmetry breaking in a long-lived meta-stable vacuum is a phenomenologically viable possibility. This relatively unexplored avenue leads to many new models of dynamical supersymmetry breaking. Here, we present a surprisingly…
We consider the role of supersymmetry breaking soft terms that are present in generalized Narain compactifications of heterotic string theory, in which local supersymmetry is spontaneously broken, with gravitino masses being inversely…
String theory is the leading contemporary framework to explore the synthesis of quantum mechanics with gravity. String phenomenology aims to study string theory while maintaining contact with observational data. The fermionic $Z_2\times…
We consider supersymmetry breaking due to a Scherk-Schwarz twist or localized mass terms in 6d ${\cal N}=1$ supersymmetric gauge theory compactified on the orbifold $T^2/Z_2$. We show that the Scherk-Schwarz breaking in 6d is equivalent to…
We give examples of string compactifications to 4d Minkowski space with different amounts of supersymmetry that can be connected by spherical domain walls. The tension of these domain walls is tunably lower than the 4d Planck scale. The…
We conjecture that the end point of bulk closed string tachyon decay at any non-zero coupling, is the annihilation of space time by Witten's bubble of nothing, resulting in a topological phase of the theory. In support of this we present a…
We consider a recently proposed setup where a codimension one brane is embedded in the background of a smooth domain wall interpolating between AdS and Minkowski minima. Since the volume of the transverse dimension is infinite, bulk…