We review the status of the integrability and solvability of the geodesics equations of motion on symmetric coset spaces that appear as sigma models of supergravity theories when reduced over respectively the timelike and spacelike direction. Such geodesic curves describe respectively timelike and spacelike brane solutions. We emphasize the applications to black holes.
The QCDSP machine at Columbia University has grown to 2,048 nodes achieving a peak speed of 100 Gigaflops. Software for quenched and Hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) evolution schemes has been developed for staggered fermions, with support for Wilson and clover fermions under development. We provide an overview of the runtime environment, the current status of the QCDSP construction program and preliminary results not presented elsewhere in these proceedings.
Logarithmic conformal field theories are based on vertex algebras with non-semisimple representation categories. While examples of such theories have been known for more than 25 years, some crucial aspects of local logarithmic CFTs have been understood only recently, with the help of a description of conformal blocks by modular functors. We present some of these results, both about bulk fields and about boundary fields and boundary states. We also describe some recent progress towards a derived modular functor. This is a summary of work with Terry Gannon, Simon Lentner, Svea Mierach, Gregor Schaumann and Yorck Sommerhauser.
We explore solutions of six dimensional gravity coupled to a non-linear sigma model, in the presence of co-dimension two branes. We investigate the compactifications induced by a spherical scalar manifold and analyze the conditions under which they are of finite volume and singularity free. We discuss the issue of single-valuedness of the scalar fields and provide some special embedding of the scalar manifold to the internal space which solves this problem. These brane solutions furnish some self-tuning features, however they do not provide a satisfactory explanation of the vanishing of the effective four dimensional cosmological constant. We discuss the properties of this model in relation with the self-tuning example based on a hyperbolic sigma model.
We consider the higher order gravity with dilaton and with the leading string theory corrections taken into account. The domain wall type solutions are investigated for arbitrary number of space-time dimensions. The explicit formulae for the fixed points and asymptotic behavior of generic solutions are given. We analyze and classify solutions with finite effective gravitational constant. There is a class of such solutions which have no singularities. We discuss in detail the relation between fine tuning and self tuning and clarify in which sense our solutions are fine-tuning free. The stability of such solutions is also discussed.
Equations of motion for the D0-brane on AdS_4 x CP^3 superbackground are shown to be classically integrable by extending the argument previously elaborated for the massless superparticle model.