High Energy Physics

I shall review the potential relevance of antisymmetric tensor fields in physics, perhaps the most intriguing being a massive antisymmetric tensor as dark matter. Next, based on the most general quadratic action for the antisymmetric tensor field, I shall discuss what are possible extensions of Einstein\\\'s theory which include antisymmetric tensor field and thus torsion in a dynamical fashion.

I will describe the emergence of geometric (Berry) phases in supersymmetric systems. In theories with degenerate states, non-Abelian geometric phases can arise. I show how supersymmetry helps to ensure the existence of this phenomenon by invoking the examples of systems with (2,2) and (4,4) supersymmetry. In the former, I show how instantons contribute crucially to the form of the non-Abelian phase. The latter system applies to D0-D4 brane dynamics in string theory, leading to a surprising re-interpretation of the Berry phase in terms of gravitational precession of a probe brane. Towards the end will comment on some work in progress on the geometric phase in (8,8) SUSY systems.

In this talk, I will talk about recent developments in studying strongly coupled gauge theory using the gauge/gravity duality in string theory. In particular, the inclusion of fundamental degrees of freedom and finite chemical potential is reviewed. As an example, I will discuss the results from analyzing the gravitational dual of a none-supersymmetric gauge theory at low temperature and finite baryon chemical potential.

Alternative gauge choices for worldsheet supersymmetry can elucidate dynamical phenomena obscured in the usual superconformal guage. In the particular example of the tachyonic E_8 heterotic string, we use a judicious gauge choice to show that the process of closed-string tachyon condensation can be understood in terms of a worldsheet super-Higgs effect. The worldsheet gravitino assimilates the goldstino and becomes a dynamical propagating field. Conformal, but not superconformal, invariance is maintained throughout.

While Calabi-Yau compactifications of string theory are mathematically elegant, they typically result in many massless scalars in the low-energy, four-dimensional theory. Thus, it is interesting to consider non-Kahler compactifications in the hopes of deriving more phenomenologically interesting models. These models have received little attention in the heterotic theory owing to their mathematical complexity, however in recent work we have found a potential way to derive interesting features of such compactifications using gauged linear sigma models.

We will consider stability in the string theory landscape. A survey over several classes of flux vacua with different characteristics indicates that the vast majority of flux vacua with small cosmological constant are unstable to rapid decay to a big crunch. Only vacua with large compactification radius or (approximately) supersymmetric configurations turn out to be long lived. We will speculate that regions of the landscape with approximate R-symmetry, while rare, might be cosmological attractors.

Warped backgrounds in string theory are useful tools for building phenomenological models of early universe cosmology and particle physics. In particular, warped backgrounds play an important role in constructing viable models of brane inflation and can help explain the presence of hierarchies in particle physics. One interesting feature of warped models is that subtle differences in the warped geometry can lead to significant differences in observational signatures in the CMB and at the LHC that can be used to distingiush different models. In this talk, I will discuss recent work in distinguishing different warped geometries through CMB and LHC observations.