Related papers: A new construction of compact 8-manifolds with hol…
We introduce a notion of twisted pure spinor in order to characterize, in a unified way, all the special Riemannian holonomy groups just as a classical pure spinor characterizes the special K\"ahler holonomy. Motivated by certain curvature…
Group theory indicates the existence of a $SO(8) X SO(7) \subset SO(16)$ invariant self-duality equation for a 3-form in 16 dimensions. It is a signal for interesting topological field theories, especially on 8-dimensional manifolds with…
Compactifications of M-theory on manifolds with reduced holonomy arise as the local eleven-dimensional description of D6-branes wrapped on supersymmetric cycles in manifolds of lower dimension with a different holonomy group. Whenever the…
Motivated by the cubic forms and anomaly cancellation formulas of Witten-Freed-Hopkins, we give some new cubic forms on spin, spin$^c$, spin$^{w_2}$ and orientable 12-manifolds respectively. We relate them to $\eta$-invariants when the…
This is the first in a series of three papers working towards constructing fibrations of compact Spin(7) manifolds by Cayley submanifolds. In this paper we describe the deformation theory of conically singular and asymptotically conical…
We study smooth fibrations of compact torsion-free Spin(7)-manifolds by Cayley submanifolds. Using geometric and topological constraints coming from the Spin(7)-structure, we show that only two topological configurations can arise. One of…
The requirement of ${\cal N}=1$ supersymmetry for M-theory backgrounds of the form of a warped product ${\cal M}\times_{w}X$, where $X$ is an eight-manifold and ${\cal M}$ is three-dimensional Minkowski or AdS space, implies the existence…
In this paper we continue our program, started in [2], of building up explicit generalized Euler angle parameterizations for all exceptional compact Lie groups. Here we solve the problem for E7, by first providing explicit matrix…
We utilize Spin(7) identities to prove that the Cayley four-form associated to a torsion-free Spin(7)-Structure is non-degenerate in the sense of multisymplectic geometry. Therefore, Spin(7) geometry may be treated as a special case of…
We develop a powerful new analytic method to construct complete non-compact G2-manifolds, i.e. Riemannian 7-manifolds (M,g) whose holonomy group is the compact exceptional Lie group G2. Our construction starts with a complete non-compact…
We compare heterotic string models on orbifolds with supergravity models on smooth compact spaces, obtained by resolving the orbifold singularities. Our main focus is on heterotic E8xE8 models on the resolution of the compact T^6/Z_3…
Using the characterization of the spin representation in terms of exterior forms, we give a complete classification of invariant spinors on the nine homogeneous realizations of the sphere $S^n$. In each of the cases we determine the…
The R^4-type corrections to ten and eleven dimensional supergravity required by string and M-theory imply corrections to supersymmetric supergravity compactifications on manifolds of special holonomy, which deform the metric away from the…
We study spin structures on compact simply-connected homogeneous pseudo-Riemannian manifolds (M = G/H, g) of a compact semisimple Lie group G. We classify flag manifolds F = G/H of a compact simple Lie group which are spin. This yields also…
We construct codimension-2 BPS brane solutions in $D=9,8,7$ maximal supergravities by solving Killing spinor equations. We assume the Poincare invariance along the worldvolume and vanishing gauge fields, and determine the metric and the…
The Hitchin flow constructs eight-dimensional Riemannian manifolds (M,g) with holonomy in Spin(7) starting with a cocalibrated G_2-structure on a seven-dimensional manifold. As Sp(2)\subseteq SU(4)\subseteq Spin(7), one may also obtain…
Non-compact G_2 holonomy metrics that arise from a T^2 bundle over a hyper-Kahler space are discussed. These are one parameter deformations of the metrics studied by Gibbons, Lu, Pope and Stelle in hep-th/0108191. Seven-dimensional spaces…
We describe special supersymmetric gauge theories in three, five, seven and nine dimensions, whose compactification on two-, four-, six- and eight-folds produces a supersymmetric quantum mechanics on moduli spaces of holomorphic bundles…
We derive the explicit formula for the intrinsic torsion of a ${\rm Spin}(7)$-structure on a $8$--dimensional Riemannian manifold $M$. Here, the intrinsic torsion is a difference of the minimal ${\rm Spin}(7)$--connection and the…
We explicitly construct a solution of eight-dimensional gauged supergravity representing D6-branes wrapped on six-cycles inside Calabi-Yau fourfolds. The solution preserves two supercharges and asymptotically is a cone with the coset space…