Talks

Some of the speculations on new physics, beyond what is in the standard model are reviewed. Particular attention is paid to ideas that try to address the hierarchy puzzle, i.e., why is the weak scale so much smaller than the Planck scale. These new theories will be tested at the large hadron collider in the near future.

We discuss D-brane instantons in four-dimensional string compactifications with special emphasis on Eucliden D2-branes in Type IIA orientifolds with spacetime filling D6-branes. These can induce superpotential couplings among the open string fields which are forbidden at the perturbative level since they violate some of the global U(1) symmetries generically present in string theory. Phenomenologcially important couplings of this type include Majorana mass terms for right-handed neutrinos or mu-terms in the Higss sector of the MSSM. If realized in concrete constructions, the exponential suppression of such non-perturbative terms may 'naturally' generate the observed hierarchies characteristic of these couplings. After discussing the general philosophy, we derive the prescription for the CFT computation of such non-perturbative superpotential couplings and exemplify the computation of Majorana mass terms in toroidal intersecting brane worlds. If time permits, we also comment on D2-instanton effetcs potentially destabilising the vacuum or modifying the D-term supersymmetry conditions.

We consider a six-dimensional space-time, in which two of the dimensions are compactified by a flux. Matter can be localized on a codimension one brane coupled to the bulk gauge field and wrapped around an axis of symmetry of the internal space. By studying the linear perturbations around this background, we show that the gravitational interaction between sources on the brane is described by Einstein 4d gravity at large distances. Our model provides a consistent setup for the study of gravity in a football compactification, without having to deal with the complications of a delta–like, codimension two brane. Moreover, it allows us to identify the origin of the problems that emerge when one takes the limit of a codimension-two brane.

After reviewing recent developments in the study of the AdS/CFT correspondence between the IR gauge theory living on a stack of D3-branes placed at a Calabi-Yau singularity and type IIB string theory on the near horizon geometry, we focus on the problem of counting chiral BPS operators in this class of CFTs and we match them with the dual string states in the general case of toric CY. Partition functions can be explicitly written in all sectors with fixed baryonic charge using localization over fixed points of the toric actions. These partition functions are related to the volume functions of the Sasaki-Einstein manifold and of its divisors.