相关论文: On Negative Energies, Strings, Branes, and Branewo…
It has recently been argued that non--BPS brane world scenarios can reproduce the small value of the cosmological constant that seems to have been measured. Objections against this proposal are discussed and necessary (but not sufficient)…
Revisiting Einstein's gravitational theory, we build a five-dimensional braneworld. Within this framework, one announces the appearance of symmetric and asymmetric domain walls. Furthermore, it examines the emergent four-dimensional gravity…
We will report on recent advances in the understanding of non-perturbative interconnections between different string dualities. Weak-strong coupling duality (S-duality) and T-duality (symmetry under compactification on dual tori) allows one…
In addition to being a prime candidate for a fundamental unified theory of all interactions in nature, string theory provides a natural setting to understand gauge field theories. This is linked to the concept of "D-branes": extended,…
A review of various aspects of superstrings in background electromagnetic fields is presented. Topics covered include the Born-Infeld action, spectrum of open strings in background gauge fields, the Schwinger mechanism, finite-temperature…
As part of a programme for the general study of the low-energy implications of supersymmetry breaking in brane-world scenarios, we study the nonlinear realization of supersymmetry which occurs when breaking N=2 to N=1 supergravity. We…
We discuss the field theory of 3-brane probes in F-theory compactifications in two configurations, generalizing the work of Sen and of Banks, Douglas and Seiberg. One configuration involves several parallel 3-brane probes in F-theory…
Recent developments in the theory of extra dimensions have opened up avenues to confront such theories with cosmological tests. We discuss a brane-world model with a bulk scalar field, motivated by supergravity. The low-energy effective…
We discuss the relevance of quantum gravity to the frontier questions in high energy phenomenology: the problems of dark matter, dark energy, and vacuum selection as well as the problems of emergent spacetime and wormholes. Dark matter and…
We initiate the study of Brane Gas Cosmology (BGC) on manifolds with non-trivial holonomy. Such compactifications are required within the context of superstring theory in order to make connections with realistic particle physics. We study…
The 19th century Aether died with Special Relativity but was resurrected by General Relativity in the form of dark energy; a tensile material with tension equal to its energy density. Such a material is provided by the D-branes of…
These lectures present a general critical assessment of various frameworks for quantum gravity, with particular emphasis on string theory. The topics discussed cover field-theoretical approaches to quantum gravity, anomalies, bosonic and…
This thesis treats several topics in the study of extra-dimensional models of the world, concerning Heterotic M-Theory and the dynamics of branes. We describe a reduction to five dimensions, over a Calabi-Yau manifold, of an improved…
In the brane-world scenario, our universe is understood as a three dimensional hypersurface embedded in a higher dimensional space-time. The fluctuations of the brane along the extra dimensions are seen from the four-dimensional point of…
Traditionally, higher-dimensional cosmological models have sought to provide a description of the fundamental forces in terms of a unifying geometrical construction. In this essay we discuss how, in their present incarnation,…
String theory avoids the ultraviolet infinities that arise in trying to quantize gravity. It is also more predictive than conventional quantum field theory, one aspect of this being the way that it contributed to the emergence of the…
We review our recent work on quantum foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum field theory and quantum gravity (formulated as metastring theory) and various implications for the problems of dark matter and dark energy. The first point…
We briefly review three aspects of string cosmology: (1) the ``stochastic'' approach to the pre-big bang scenario, (2) the presence of chaos in the generic cosmological solutions of the tree-level low-energy effective actions coming out of…
We consider ``brane-universes'', where matter is confined to four-dimensional hypersurfaces (three-branes) whereas one extra compact dimension is felt by gravity only. We show that the cosmology of such branes is definitely different from…
In this work we deal with the presence of braneworld solutions in a five-dimensional space-time with a single extra spatial dimension of infinite extent. The braneworld scenario is built under the presence of a single real scalar field, and…