No Arabic abstract
A recently constructed limit of K3 has a long neck consisting of segments, each of which is a nilfold fibred over a line, that are joined together with Kaluza-Klein monopoles. The neck is capped at either end by a Tian-Yau space, which is non-compact, hyperkahler and asymptotic to a nilfold fibred over a line. We show that the type IIA string on this degeneration of K3 is dual to the type I$$ string, with the Kaluza-Klein monopoles dual to the D8-branes and the Tian-Yau spaces providing a geometric dual to the O8 orientifold planes. At strong coupling, each O8-plane can emit a D8-brane to give an O8$^*$ plane, so that there can be up to 18 D8-branes in the type I$$ string. In the IIA dual, this phenomenon occurs at weak coupling and there can be up to 18 Kaluza-Klein monopoles in the dual geometry. We consider further duals in which the Kaluza-Klein monopoles are dualised to NS5-branes or exotic branes. A 3-torus with $H$-flux can be realised in string theory as an NS5-brane wrapped on $T^3$, with the 3-torus fibred over a line. T-dualising gives a 4-dimensional hyperkahler manifold which is a nilfold fibred over a line, which can be viewed as a Kaluza-Klein monopole wrapped on $T^2$. Further T-dualities then give non-geometric spaces fibred over a line and can be regarded as wrapped exotic branes. These are all domain wall configurations, dual to the D8-brane. Type I$$ string theory is the natural home for D8-branes, and we dualise this to find string theory homes for each of these branes. The Kaluza-Klein monopoles arise in the IIA string on the degenerate K3. T-duals of this give exotic branes on non-geometric spaces.
A classification of D-branes in Type IIB Op^- orientifolds and orbifolds in terms of Real and equivariant KK-groups is given. We classify D-branes intersecting orientifold planes from which are recovered some special limits as the spectrum for D-branes on top of Type I Op^- orientifold and the bivariant classification of Type I D-branes. The gauge group and transformation properties of the low energy effective field theory living in the corresponding unstable D-brane system are computed by extensive use of Clifford algebras. Some speculations about the existence of oth
The emerging study of fractons, a new type of quasi-particle with restricted mobility, has motivated the construction of several classes of interesting continuum quantum field theories with novel properties. One such class consists of foliated field theories which, roughly, are built by coupling together fields supported on the leaves of foliations of spacetime. Another approach, which we refer to as exotic field theory, focuses on constructing Lagrangians consistent with special symmetries (like subsystem symmetries) that are adjacent to fracton physics. A third framework is that of infinite-component Chern-Simons theories, which attempts to generalize the role of conventional Chern-Simons theory in describing (2+1)D Abelian topological order to fractonic order in (3+1)D. The study of these theories is ongoing, and many of their properties remain to be understood. Historically, it has been fruitful to study QFTs by embedding them into string theory. One way this can be done is via D-branes, extended objects whose dynamics can, at low energies, be described in terms of conventional quantum field theory. QFTs that can be realized in this way can then be analyzed using the rich mathematical and physical structure of string theory. In this paper, we show that foliated field theories, exotic field theories, and infinite-component Chern-Simons theories can all be realized on the world-volumes of branes. We hope that these constructions will ultimately yield valuable insights into the physics of these interesting field theories.
We use F-theory to derive a general expression for the flux potential of type II compactifications with D7/D3 branes, including open string moduli and 2-form fluxes on the branes. Our main example is F-theory on K3 $times$ K3 and its orientifold limit T^2/Z_2 x K3. The full scalar potential cannot be derived from the bulk superpotential W=int Omega wedge G_3 and generically destabilizes the orientifold. Generically all open and closed string moduli are fixed, except for a volume factor. An alternative formulation of the problem in terms of the effective supergravity is given and we construct an explicit map between the F-theory fluxes and gaugings. We use the superpotential to compute the effective action for flux compactifications on orbifolds, including the mu-term and soft-breaking terms on the D7-brane world-volume.
We extend the four-dimensional gauged supergravity analysis of type IIB vacua on $K3times T^2/Z_2$ to the case where also D3 and D7 moduli, belonging to N=2 vector multiplets, are turned on. In this case, the overall special geometry does not correspond to a symmetric space, unless D3 or D7 moduli are switched off. In the presence of non--vanishing fluxes, we discuss supersymmetric critical points which correspond to Minkowski vacua, finding agreement with previous analysis. Finally, we point out that care is needed in the choice of the symplectic holomorphic sections of special geometry which enter the computation of the scalar potential.
We analyze unoriented Wess-Zumino-Witten models from a geometrical point of view. We show that the geometric interpretation of simple current crosscap states is as centre orientifold planes localized on conjugacy classes of the group manifold. We determine the locations and dimensions of these planes for arbitrary simply-connected groups and orbifolds thereof. The dimensions of the O-planes turn out to be given by the dimensions of symmetric coset manifolds based on regular embeddings. Furthermore, we give a geometrical interpretation of boundary conjugation in open unoriented WZW models; it yields D-branes together with their images under the orientifold projection. To find the agreement between O-planes and crosscap states, we find explicit answers for lattice extensions of Gaussian sums. These results allow us to express the modular P-matrix, which is directly related to the crosscap coefficient, in terms of characters of the horizontal subgroup of the affine Lie algebra. A corollary of this relation is that there exists a formal linear relation between the modular P- and the modular S-matrix.