Related papers: Mass scales, supersymmetry breaking and open strin…
Recently, Kim, Shiu and Vafa proposed general consistency conditions for six dimensional supergravity theories with minimal supersymmetry coming from couplings to strings. We test them in explicit perturbative orientifold models in order to…
We consider "super no-scale models" in the framework of the heterotic string, where the N=4,2,1 --> 0 spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry is induced by geometrical fluxes realizing a stringy Scherk-Schwarz perturbative mechanism.…
If supersymmetry turns out to be a symmetry of nature at low energies, the first order of business to measure the soft breaking parameters. But one will also want to understand the symmetry, and its breaking, more microscopically. Two…
This article discusses model-building scenarios including anti-D3-/D7-branes, in which supersymmetry is broken spontaneously, despite having no scale at which sparticles appear and standard supersymmetry is restored. If the branes are…
We study a set of asymmetric deformations of non-critical superstring theories in various dimensions. The deformations arise as Kaehler and complex structure deformations of an orthogonal two-torus comprising of a parallel and a transverse…
We investigate codimension-one vacua arising from low energy effective actions inspired by string theory, with an eye to their consistency when localized sources are allowed in the equations of motion. We draw some inspiration from…
We study gauge symmetry breaking patterns in supersymmetric gauge models defined on $M^4\times S^1$. Instead of utilizing the Scherk-Schwarz mechanism, supersymmetry is broken by bare mass terms for gaugino and squarks. Though the matter…
We construct open descendants of Gepner models, concentrating mainly on the six-dimensional case, where they give type I vacua with rich patterns of Chan-Paton symmetry breaking and various numbers of tensor multiplets, including zero. We…
In this thesis we analyze the problem of symmetry breaking in models with extra dimensions compactified on orbifolds. In the first chapter we briefly review the main symmetry breaking mechanisms peculiar of extra dimensions such as the…
These lectures present some topics of string phenomenology and contain two parts. In the first part, I review the possibility of lowering the string scale in the TeV region, that provides a theoretical framework for solving the mass…
In the first part of the talk, we discuss non-geometric twists and shifts and briefly review asymmetric orbifolds and free fermion constructions. These allow us to build Type IIB models with N = 1_L + 1_R and N = 1_L + 0_R models having few…
Recently a class of Type IIA orientifold models was constructed yielding just the fermions of the SM at the intersections of D6-branes wrapping a 6-torus. We generalize that construction to the case of Type IIB compactified on an…
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 perform a systematic study of the Standard Model embedding in a D-brane configuration of type I string theory at the TeV scale. We end up with an attractive model and we study several phenomenological questions, such as gauge coupling…
The plethora of scalar fields participating in the formulation of a softly broken supersymmetric theory can threat the stability of the standard vacuum. The generic situation is twofold. Directions in scalar field space may exist along…
A fundamental problem in contemporary string/M theory is to count the number of inequivalent vacua satisfying constraints in a string theory model. This article contains the first rigorous results on the number and distribution of…
Models of spontaneous supersymmetry breaking generically have an R-symmetry, which is problematic for obtaining gaugino masses and avoiding light R-axions. The situation is improved in models of metastable supersymmetry breaking, which…
Generic D-brane string models of particle physics predict the existence of extra U(1) gauge symmetries beyond hypercharge. These symmetries are not of the E_6 class but rather include the gauging of Baryon and Lepton numbers as well as…
We consider electroweak symmetry breaking in supersymmetric models with an extra non-anomalous U(1)' gauge symmetry and an extra standard-model singlet scalar S. For appropriate charges the U(1)' forbids an elementary mu term, but an…
We discuss the mediation of supersymmetry breaking from closed to open strings, extending and improving previous analysis of the authors in Nucl. Phys. B 695 (2004) 103 [hep-th/0403293]. In the general case, we find the absence of anomaly…