Related papers: Mass scales, supersymmetry breaking and open strin…
Branes are ubiquitous elements of any low-energy limit of string theory. We point out that negative tension branes violate all the standard energy conditions of the higher-dimensional spacetime they are embedded in; this opens the door to…
This review is devoted to strings and branes. Firstly, perturbative string theory is introduced. The appearance of various types of branes is discussed. These include orbifold fixed planes, D-branes and orientifold planes. The connection to…
The possible existence of an exponentially large number of vacua in string theory behooves one to consider possibilities beyond our traditional notions of naturalness. Such an approach to electroweak physics was recently used in "Split…
Notwithstanding the central role of D-branes in many recently proposed string dualities, several interesting type I vacua have been found without resorting directly to D-brane technology. In this talk, we analyze a three-generation…
The moduli space of toroidal type I vacua, which are consistent at the non-perturbative level, consists of independent branches characterized by the number (0, 16 or 32) of rigid branes sitting on top of orientifold planes. This structure…
Type I string theory provides eight classes of unstable D-brane systems. We determine the gauge group and tachyon spectrum for each one, and thereby describe the gauge symmetry breaking pattern in the low-energy world-volume field theory.…
We investigate the quantum structure of Witten's cubic open bosonic string field theory by computing the one-loop contribution to the open string tadpole using both oscillator and conformal field theory methods. We find divergences and a…
We study some phenomenological implications of models where the scale of quantum gravity effects lies much below the four-dimensional Planck scale. These models arise from M-theory vacua where either the internal space volume is large or…
We study different phenomenological aspects of compact, D=4, N=1 Type IIB orientifolds considered as models for unification of the standard model and gravity. We discuss the structure of the compactification, string and unification scales…
We analyze the propagation of open and unoriented strings on the Neveu-Schwarz pentabrane (N5-brane) along the lines of a similar analysis for the SU(2) WZNW models. We discuss the two classes of open descendants of the diagonal models and…
We point out a generic problem in string-inspired supergravity models with an anomalous $U(1)_X$. A large number of matter multiplets charged under $U(1)_X$ remain massless above the supersymmetry-breaking scale because of degeneracy of…
In brane world models of nature, supersymmetry breaking is often isolated on a distant brane in a higher dimensional space. The form of the Kahler potential in generic string and M-theory brane world backgrounds is shown to give rise to…
We construct intersecting D5-brane orbifold models that yield the (non-supersymmetric) standard model up to vector-like matter and charged-singlet scalars. The models are constrained by the requirement that twisted tadpoles cancel, and that…
We review the construction and phenomenology of intersecting brane worlds. The breaking of chiral and supersymmetry together with a reduction of gauge symmetry by introducing D-branes at generic angles into type I or type II string…
The phenomenological consequences of the dilaton-type soft supersymmetry breaking terms in the context of the next to minimal supersymmetric standard model are investigated. We always find a very low top quark mass. As a consequence such…
By using zero-norm states in the spectrum, we explicitly demonstrate the existence of an infinite number of high energy symmetry structures of the closed bosonic string theory. Each symmetry transformation (except those generated by…
Within a class of superstring vacua which have an additional non-anomalous $U(1)'$ gauge factor, we address the scale of the $U(1)'$ symmetry breaking and constraints on the exotic particle content and their masses. We also show that an…
Metastable supersymmetry breaking configurations of D-branes and NS5-branes in string theory often owe their existence to classical gravitational interactions between the branes. We show that in the effective theory of the light fields,…
Models with large extra dimensions offer the possibility of the Planck scale being of order the electroweak scale, thus alleviating the gauge hierarchy problem. We show that these models suffer from a breakdown of unitarity at around three…
We consider the low energy description of five dimensional models of supergravity with boundaries comprising a vector multiplet and the universal hypermultiplet in the bulk. We analyse the spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry induced by…