14 research outputs found
Five-Brane Superpotentials and Heterotic/F-theory Duality
Under heterotic/F-theory duality it was argued that a wide class of heterotic
five-branes is mapped into the geometry of an F-theory compactification
manifold. In four-dimensional compactifications this identifies a five-brane
wrapped on a curve in the base of an elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau threefold
with a specific F-theory Calabi-Yau fourfold containing the blow-up of the
five-brane curve. We argue that this duality can be reformulated by first
constructing a non-Calabi-Yau heterotic threefold by blowing up the curve of
the five-brane into a divisor with five-brane flux. Employing
heterotic/F-theory duality this leads us to the construction of a Calabi-Yau
fourfold and four-form flux. Moreover, we obtain an explicit map between the
five-brane superpotential and an F-theory flux superpotential. The map of the
open-closed deformation problem of a five-brane in a compact Calabi-Yau
threefold into a deformation problem of complex structures on a dual Calabi-Yau
fourfold with four-form flux provides a powerful tool to explicitly compute the
five-brane superpotential.Comment: 43 pages, v2: minor correction
Five-Brane Superpotentials, Blow-Up Geometries and SU(3) Structure Manifolds
We investigate the dynamics of space-time filling five-branes wrapped on
curves in heterotic and orientifold Calabi-Yau compactifications. We first
study the leading N=1 scalar potential on the infinite deformation space of the
brane-curve around a supersymmetric configuration. The higher order potential
is also determined by a brane superpotential which we compute for a subset of
light deformations. We argue that these deformations map to new complex
structure deformations of a non-Calabi-Yau manifold which is obtained by
blowing up the brane-curve into a four-cycle and by replacing the brane by
background fluxes. This translates the original brane-bulk system into a
unifying geometrical formulation. Using this blow-up geometry we compute the
complete set of open-closed Picard-Fuchs differential equations and identify
the brane superpotential at special points in the field space for five-branes
in toric Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces. This has an interpretation in open mirror
symmetry and enables us to list compact disk instanton invariants. As a first
step towards promoting the blow-up geometry to a supersymmetric heterotic
background we propose a non-Kaehler SU(3) structure and an identification of
the three-form flux.Comment: 95 pages, 4 figures; v2: Minor corrections, references update
Cosmic Chronometers: Constraining the Equation of State of Dark Energy. I: H(z) Measurements
We present new determinations of the cosmic expansion history from
red-envelope galaxies. We have obtained for this purpose high-quality spectra
with the Keck-LRIS spectrograph of red-envelope galaxies in 24 galaxy clusters
in the redshift range 0.2 < z < 1.0. We complement these Keck spectra with
high-quality, publicly available archival spectra from the SPICES and VVDS
surveys. We improve over our previous expansion history measurements in Simon
et al. (2005) by providing two new determinations of the expansion history:
H(z) = 97 +- 62 km/sec/Mpc at z = 0.5 and H(z) = 90 +- 40 km/sec/Mpc at z =
0.8. We discuss the uncertainty in the expansion history determination that
arises from uncertainties in the synthetic stellar-population models. We then
use these new measurements in concert with cosmic-microwave-background (CMB)
measurements to constrain cosmological parameters, with a special emphasis on
dark-energy parameters and constraints to the curvature. In particular, we
demonstrate the usefulness of direct H(z) measurements by constraining the
dark- energy equation of state parameterized by w0 and wa and allowing for
arbitrary curvature. Further, we also constrain, using only CMB and H(z) data,
the number of relativistic degrees of freedom to be 4 +- 0.5 and their total
mass to be < 0.2 eV, both at 1-sigma.Comment: Submitted to JCA
Measurement of the Omega_c Lifetime
We present the measurement of the lifetime of the Omega_c we have performed
using three independent data samples from two different decay modes. Using a
Sigma- beam of 340 GeV/c we have obtained clean signals for the Omega_c
decaying into Xi- K- pi+ pi+ and Omega- pi+ pi- pi+, avoiding topological cuts
normally used in charm analysis. The short but measurable lifetime of the
Omega_c is demonstrated by a clear enhancement of the signals at short but
finite decay lengths. Using a continuous maximum likelihood method we
determined the lifetime to be tau(Omega_c) = 55 +13-11(stat) +18-23(syst) fs.
This makes the Omega_c the shortest living weakly decaying particle observed so
far. The short value of the lifetime confirms the predicted pattern of the
charmed baryon lifetimes and demonstrates that the strong interaction plays a
vital role in the lifetimes of charmed hadrons.Comment: 15 pages, including 7 figures; gzipped, uuencoded postscrip
Topological open strings on orbifolds
We use the remodeling approach to the B-model topological string in terms of
recursion relations to study open string amplitudes at orbifold points. To this
end, we clarify modular properties of the open amplitudes and rewrite them in a
form that makes their transformation properties under the modular group
manifest. We exemplify this procedure for the C^3/Z_3 orbifold point of local
P^2, where we present results for topological string amplitudes for genus zero
and up to three holes, and for the one-holed torus. These amplitudes can be
understood as generating functions for either open orbifold Gromov-Witten
invariants of C^3/Z_3, or correlation functions in the orbifold CFT involving
insertions of both bulk and boundary operators.Comment: 38 page
Computing Brane and Flux Superpotentials in F-theory Compactifications
In four-dimensional F-theory compactifications with N=1 supersymmetry the
fields describing the dynamics of space-time filling 7-branes are part of the
complex structure moduli space of the internal Calabi-Yau fourfold. We
explicitly compute the flux superpotential in F-theory depending on all complex
structure moduli, including the 7-brane deformations and the field
corresponding to the dilaton-axion. Since fluxes on the 7-branes induce 5-brane
charge, a local limit allows to effectively match the F-theory results to a
D5-brane in a non-compact Calabi-Yau threefold with threeform fluxes. We
analyze the classical and instanton contributions to the F-theory
superpotential using mirror symmetry for Calabi-Yau fourfolds. The F-theory
compactifications under consideration also admit heterotic dual descriptions
and we discuss the identification of the moduli in this non-perturbative
duality.Comment: 75 pages, 1 figure; typos corrected, references adde
Holomorphicity and Modularity in Seiberg-Witten Theories with Matter
We calculate the gravitational corrections to the effective action of N=2
SU(2) Seiberg-Witten theory with matter using modularity, the holomorphic
anomaly equation and expected behavior at the boundaries of the moduli space.
As in pure gauge theory we show that the gap condition at the dyon
singularities completely fixes the gravitational corrections. We discuss the
behavior of the gravitational corrections at the conformal points. We compare
our results with the recursive solution of the loop equation in the matrix
model approach, which provides in addition open amplitudes.Comment: 53 pages, no figure