Related papers: Inertia Orbifolds, Configuration Spaces and the Gh…

``An orbifold is a space which is locally modeled on the quotient of a vector space by a finite group.'' This sentence is so easily said or written that more than one person has missed some of the subtleties hidden by orbifolds. Orbifolds…

The free loops space $\Lambda X$ of a space $X$ has become an important object of study particularly in the case when $X$ is a manifold.The study of free loop spaces is motivated in particular by two main examples. The first is their…

In this dissertation, we study various aspects of type IIB string theory compactified on freely acting orbifolds. We focus particularly on asymmetric orbifolds, which are examples of non-geometric string compactifications and constitute an…

All solvable two-dimensional quantum gravity models have non-trivial BRST cohomology with vanishing ghost number. These states form a ring and all the other states in the theory fall into modules of this ring. The relations in the ring and…

Given a manifold with corners $X$, we associates to it the corner structure simplicial complex $\Sigma_X$. Its reduced K-homology is isomorphic to the K-theory of the $C^*$-algebra $\mathcal{K}_b(X)$ of b-compact operators on $X$. Moreover,…

We provide topological obstructions to the existence of orbit cylinders of symmetric orbits, for mechanical systems preserved by antisymplectic involutions (e.g. the restricted three-body problem). Such cylinders induce continuous paths…

We introduce a new map between configuration spaces of points in a background manifold - the replication map - and prove that it is a homology isomorphism in a range with certain coefficients. This is particularly of interest when the…

The spaces BG_2 and BDI(4) have the property that their mod 2 cohomology is given by the rank 3 and 4 Dickson invariants respectively. Associated with these spaces one has for q odd the classifying spaces of the finite groups BG_2(q)and the…

The two-loop chiral measure for superstring theories compactified on $\bZ_2$ reflection orbifolds is constructed from first principles for even spin structures. This is achieved by a careful implementation of the chiral splitting procedure…

This paper is concerned with quantum cohomology and Fukaya categories of a closed monotone symplectic manifold X, where we use coefficients in a field k of characteristic p > 0. The main result of this paper is that the quantum Steenrod…

The heterotic $SU(3)$ system, also known as the Hull--Strominger system, arises from compactifications of heterotic string theory to six dimensions. This paper investigates the local structure of the moduli space of solutions to this system…

We define exotic twisted $S^1$-equivariant cohomology for the loop space $LZ$ of a smooth manifold $Z$ via the invariant differential forms on $LZ$ with coefficients in the (typically non-flat) holonomy line bundle of a gerbe, with…

The subspace of the moduli space of F-theory on K3 over which the coupling remains constant develops new branches at special values of this coupling. These values correspond to fixed points under the SL(2,Z) duality group of the type IIB…

We describe various equivalent ways of associating to an orbifold, or more generally a higher \'etale differentiable stack, a weak homotopy type. Some of these ways extend to arbitrary higher stacks on the site of smooth manifolds, and we…

We prove an analogue of the Madsen-Weiss theorem for high dimensional manifolds. For example, we explicitly describe the ring of characteristic classes of smooth fibre bundles whose fibres are connected sums of g copies of S^n x S^n, in the…

This article surveys the use of configuration space integrals in the study of the topology of knot and link spaces. The main focus is the exposition of how these integrals produce finite type invariants of classical knots and links. More…

Preliminary investigations of the topological phase of string theory along the lines of a (restricted) $\dot{w}_{\infty}$ non-linear sigma model are provided. Gauge fixing the w gravity gauge fields by preserving a geometric identity Lorenz…

Let $X(P,\lambda)$ be a 4-dimensional toric orbifold associated to a polygon $P$ and a characteristic function $\lambda$. Assuming that $X(P,\lambda)$ is locally smooth over a vertex of $P$, we determine the integral cohomology ring…

In this note, we construct invariant and coinvariant Morse chain complexes with integer coefficients for any compact effective orbifold. We show that the homologies of these two chain complexes are invariants of the orbifold. We conjecture…

It is well known that (in suitable codimension) the spaces of long knots in $\mathbb{R}^n$ modulo immersions are double loop spaces. Hence the homology carries a natural Gerstenhaber structure, given by the Gerstenhaber structure on the…