668 research outputs found

    Mapping the Focal Points of WordPress: A Software and Critical Code Analysis

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    Programming languages or code can be examined through numerous analytical lenses. This project is a critical analysis of WordPress, a prevalent web content management system, applying four modes of inquiry. The project draws on theoretical perspectives and areas of study in media, software, platforms, code, language, and power structures. The applied research is based on Critical Code Studies, an interdisciplinary field of study that holds the potential as a theoretical lens and methodological toolkit to understand computational code beyond its function. The project begins with a critical code analysis of WordPress, examining its origins and source code and mapping selected vulnerabilities. An examination of the influence of digital and computational thinking follows this. The work also explores the intersection of code patching and vulnerability management and how code shapes our sense of control, trust, and empathy, ultimately arguing that a rhetorical-cultural lens can be used to better understand code\u27s controlling influence. Recurring themes throughout these analyses and observations are the connections to power and vulnerability in WordPress\u27 code and how cultural, processual, rhetorical, and ethical implications can be expressed through its code, creating a particular worldview. Code\u27s emergent properties help illustrate how human values and practices (e.g., empathy, aesthetics, language, and trust) become encoded in software design and how people perceive the software through its worldview. These connected analyses reveal cultural, processual, and vulnerability focal points and the influence these entanglements have concerning WordPress as code, software, and platform. WordPress is a complex sociotechnical platform worthy of further study, as is the interdisciplinary merging of theoretical perspectives and disciplines to critically examine code. Ultimately, this project helps further enrich the field by introducing focal points in code, examining sociocultural phenomena within the code, and offering techniques to apply critical code methods

    Fundamental and Applied Problems of the String Theory Landscape

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    In this thesis we study quantum corrections to string-derived effective actions \textit{per se} as well as their implications for phenomenologically relevant setups like the \textit{Large Volume Scenario} (LVS) and the \textit{anti-D3-brane} uplift. In the first part of this thesis, we improve the understanding of string loop corrections on general Calabi-Yau orientifolds from an effective field theory perspective by proposing a new classification scheme for quantum corrections. Thereby, we discover new features of string loop corrections, like for instance possible logarithmic effects in the Kahler and scalar potential, which are relevant for phenomenological applications like models of inflation. In the next part of the thesis, we derive a simple and explicit formula, the \textit{LVS parametric tadpole constraint} (PTC), that ensures that the anti-D3-brane uplifted LVS dS vacuum is protected against the most dangerous higher order corrections. The main difficulty appears to be the small uplifting contribution which is necessary due to the exponentially large volume obtained via the LVS. This in turn requires a large negative contribution to the tadpole which is quantified in the PTC. As the negative contribution to the tadpole is limited in weakly coupled string theories, the PTC represents a concrete challenge for the LVS. The last part of the thesis investigates the impact of α\alpha' corrections to the brane-flux annihilation process discovered by Kachru, Pearson, and Verlinde (KPV) on which the anti-D3-brane uplift is based. We find that α\alpha' corrections drastically alter the KPV analysis with the result that much more flux in the Klebanov-Strassler throat is required than previously assumed in order to control the leading α\alpha' corrections on the NS5-brane. The implication for the LVS with standard anti-D3-brane uplift can again be quantified by the PTC. Incorporating this new bound significantly increases the required negative contribution to the tadpole. In addition, we uncover a new uplifting mechanism not relying on large fluxes and hence deep warped throats, thereby sidestepping the main difficulties related to the PTC

    On Hamilton cycles in graphs defined by intersecting set systems

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    In 1970 Lov\'asz conjectured that every connected vertex-transitive graph admits a Hamilton cycle, apart from five exceptional graphs. This conjecture has recently been settled for graphs defined by intersecting set systems, which feature prominently throughout combinatorics. In this expository article, we retrace these developments and give an overview of the many different ingredients in the proofs

    Homological algebra and moduli spaces in topological field theories

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    This is a survey of various types of Floer theories (both in symplectic geometry and gauge theory) and relations among them.Comment: 56 pages 12 Figure

    The spinor bundle on loop space

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    We give a construction of the spinor bundle of the loop space of a string manifold together with its fusion product, inspired by ideas from Stolz and Teichner. The spinor bundle is a super bimodule bundle for a bundle of Clifford von Neumann algebras over the free path space, and the fusion product is defined using Connes fusion of such bimodules. As the main result, we prove that a spinor bundle with fusion product on a manifold X exists if and only X is string.Comment: 86 pages; Some minor corrections; added 2 figures; divested material on super bundle gerbes to Appendix

    Torsion in cohomology and dimensional reduction

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    Conventional wisdom dictates that ZN\mathbb{Z}_N factors in the integral cohomology group Hp(Xn,Z)H^p(X_n, \mathbb{Z}) of a compact manifold XnX_n cannot be computed via smooth pp-forms. We revisit this lore in light of the dimensional reduction of string theory on XnX_n, endowed with a GG-structure metric that leads to a supersymmetric EFT. If massive pp-form eigenmodes of the Laplacian enter the EFT, then torsion cycles coupling to them will have a non-trivial smeared delta form, that is an EFT long-wavelength description of pp-form currents of the (np)(n-p)-cycles of XnX_n. We conjecture that, whenever torsion cycles are calibrated, their linking number can be computed via their smeared delta forms. From the EFT viewpoint, a torsion factor in cohomology corresponds to a ZN\mathbb{Z}_N gauge symmetry realised by a St\"uckelberg-like action, and calibrated torsion cycles to BPS objects that source the massive fields involved in it.Comment: 44 pages + appendice

    Moduli Stabilization in String Theory

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    We give an overview of moduli stabilization in compactifications of string theory. We summarize current methods for construction and analysis of vacua with stabilized moduli, and we describe applications to cosmology and particle physics. This is a contribution to the Handbook of Quantum Gravity.Comment: 74 pages. Invited chapter for the Handbook of Quantum Gravity (edited by Cosimo Bambi, Leonardo Modesto, and Ilya Shapiro, Springer 2023

    Crystals for shifted key polynomials

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    This article continues our study of PP- and QQ-key polynomials, which are (non-symmetric) "partial" Schur PP- and QQ-functions as well as "shifted" versions of key polynomials. Our main results provide a crystal interpretation of PP- and QQ-key polynomials, namely, as the characters of certain connected subcrystals of normal crystals associated to the queer Lie superalgebra qn\mathfrak{q}_n. In the PP-key case, the ambient normal crystals are the qn\mathfrak{q}_n-crystals studied by Grantcharov et al., while in the QQ-key case, these are replaced by the extended qn\mathfrak{q}_n-crystals recently introduced by the first author and Tong. Using these constructions, we propose a crystal-theoretic lift of several conjectures about the decomposition of involution Schubert polynomials into PP- and QQ-key polynomials. We verify these generalized conjectures in a few special cases. Along the way, we establish some miscellaneous results about normal qn\mathfrak{q}_n-crystals and Demazure gln\mathfrak{gl}_n-crystals.Comment: 60 pages, 6 figure

    Coulomb and Higgs Phases of G2G_2-manifolds

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    Ricci flat manifolds of special holonomy are a rich framework as models of the extra dimensions in string/MM-theory. At special points in vacuum moduli space, special kinds of singularities occur and demand a physical interpretation. In this paper we show that the topologically distinct G2G_2-holonomy manifolds arising from desingularisations of codimension four orbifold singularities due to Joyce and Karigiannis correspond physically to Coulomb and Higgs phases of four dimensional gauge theories. The results suggest generalisations of the Joyce-Karigiannis construction to arbitrary ADE-singularities and higher order twists which we explore in detail in explicitly solvable local models. These models allow us to derive an isomorphism between moduli spaces of Ricci flat metrics on these non-compact G2G_2-manifolds and flat ADE-connections on compact flat 3-manifolds which we establish explicitly for SU(n)\operatorname{SU}(n).Comment: 22 page
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