3 research outputs found
Intersecting Brane Worlds -- A Path to the Standard Model ?
In this review we describe the general geometrical framework of brane world
constructions in orientifolds of type IIA string theory with D6-branes wrapping
3-cycles in a Calabi-Yau 3-fold. These branes generically intersect in points
on the internal space, and the patterns of intersections govern the chiral
fermion spectra. We discuss how the open string spectra in intersecting brane
models are constructed, how the Standard Model can be embedded, and also how
supersymmetry can be realized in this class of string vacua. After the general
considerations we specialize the discussion to the case of orbifold backgrounds
with intersecting D6-branes and to the quintic Calabi-Yau manifold. Then, we
discuss parts of the effective action of intersecting brane world models.
Specifically we compute from the Born-Infeld action of the wrapped D-branes the
tree-level, D-term scalar potential, which is important for the stability of
the considered backgrounds as well as for questions related to supersymmetry
breaking. Second, we review the recent computation concerning of gauge coupling
unification and also of one-loop gauge threshold corrections in intersecting
brane world models. Finally we also discuss some aspects of proton decay in
intersecting brane world models.Comment: 31 pages, To appear in the proceedings of the RTN-workshop ``The
quantum structure of spacetime and the geometric nature of fundamental
interactions'', September 2003 in Copenhagen, revised version contains new
refs and one corrected equatio
Flavour changing neutral currents in intersecting brane models.
Intersecting D-brane models provide an attractive explanation of family replication in the context of string theory. We show, however, that the localization of fermion families at different brane intersections in the extra dimensions introduces flavour changing neutral currents mediated by the Kaluza-Klein excitations of the gauge fields. This is a generic feature in these models, and it implies stringent bounds on the mass of the lightest Kaluza-Klein modes (becoming severe when the compactification radii are larger than the string length). We present the full string calculation of four-fermion interactions in models with intersecting D-branes, recovering the field theory result. This reveals other stringy sources of flavour violation, which give bounds that are complementary to the KK bounds (i.e. they become severe when the compactification radii are comparable to the string length). Taken together these bounds imply that the string scale is larger than Msgtrsim102 TeV, implying that non-supersymmetric cases are phenomenologically disfavoured