On the Cut-off Estimate in Lifshitz Five Dimensional Field Theories

We analyze if and to what extent the high energy behaviour of five-dimensional (5D) gauge theories can be improved by adding certain higher dimensional operators of "Lifshitz" type, without breaking the ordinary four-dimensional Lorentz symmetries. We show that the UV behaviour of the transverse gauge field polarizations can be improved by the Lifshitz operators, while the longitudinal polarizations get strongly coupled at energies lower than the ones in ordinary 5D theories, spoiling the usefulness of the construction in non-abelian gauge theories. We conclude that the improved behaviour as effective theories of the ordinary 5D models is not only related to locality and 5D gauge symmetries, but is a special property of the standard theories defined by the lowest dimensional operators.Comment: 18 pages, one appendix; v2: minor improvements, to appear in Phys. Rev. D; v3: one typo fixed, incorrect argument at the end of section 5 removed, acknowledgments added, conclusions unchanged, supersedes published version v

A Simple UV-Completion of QED in 5D

We construct a Lifshitz-like version of five-dimensional (5D) QED which is UV - completed and reduces at low energies to ordinary 5D QED. The UV quantum behaviour of this theory is very smooth. In particular, the gauge coupling constant is finite at all energy scales and at all orders in perturbation theory. We study the IR properties of this theory, when compactified on a circle, and compare the one-loop energy dependence of the coupling in the Lifshitz theory with that coming from the standard 5D QED effective field theory. The range of validity of the 5D effective field theory is found to agree with the more conservative version of Naive Dimensional Analysis.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures; v2: Minor improvements, matches journal versio

A note on supersymmetric D-brane dynamics

We study the spin dependence of D-brane dynamics in the Green-Schwarz formalism of boundary states. In particular we show how to interpret insertion of supercharges on the boundary state as sources of non-universal spin effects in D-brane potentials. In this way we find for a generic (D)p-brane, potentials going like $v^{4-n}/r^{7-p+n}$ corresponding to interactions between the different components of the D-brane supermultiplet. From the eleven dimensional point of view, these potentials arise from the exchange of field strengths corresponding to the graviton and the three form, coupled non-minimally to the branes. We show how an annulus computation truncated to its massless contribution is enough to reproduce these next-to-leading effects, meaning in particular that the one-loop (M)atrix theory effective action should encode all the spin dependence of low-energy supergravity interactions.Comment: LaTex file, 12 pages, no figures, some corrections in last section and references added; version to appear in Physics Letters

Orbifold resolutions with general profile

A very general class of resolved versions of the C/Z_N, T^2/Z_N and S^1/Z_2 orbifolds is considered and the free theory of 6D chiral fermions studied on it. As the orbifold limit is taken, localized 4D chiral massless fermions are seen to arise at the fixed points. Their number, location and chirality is found to be independent on the detailed profile of the resolving space and to agree with the result of hep-th/0409229, in which a particular resolution was employed. As a consistency check of the resolution procedure, the massive equation is numerically studied. In particular, for S^1/Z_2, the "resolved" mass--spectrum and wave functions in the internal space are seen to correctly reproduce the usual orbifold ones, as the orbifold limit is taken.Comment: 28 pages, 3 figures, typos corrected, references adde

Heterotic compactifications and nearly-Kahler manifolds

We propose that under certain conditions heterotic string compactifications on half-flat and nearly-Kahler manifolds are equivalent. Based on this correspondence we argue that the moduli space of the nearly-Kahler manifolds under discussion consists only of the Kahler deformations moduli space and there is no correspondent for the complex structure deformations.Comment: 5 pages, references added, typos correcte

Gaugino condensation in an improved heterotic M-theory

Gaugino condensation is discussed in the context of a consistent new version of low energy heterotic M-theory. The four dimensional reduction of the theory is described, based on simple boson and fermion backgrounds. This is generalised to include gaugino condenstates and various background fluxes, some with non-trivial topology. It is found that condensate and quantised flux contributions to the four-dimensional superpotential contain no corrections due to the warping of the higher dimensional metric.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, LaTe

Nongeometry, Duality Twists, and the Worldsheet

In this paper, we use orbifold methods to construct nongeometric backgrounds, and argue that they correspond to the spacetimes discussed in \cite{dh,wwf}. More precisely, we make explicit through several examples the connection between interpolating orbifolds and spacetime duality twists. We argue that generic nongeometric backgrounds arising from duality twists will not have simple orbifold constructions and then proceed to construct several examples which do have a consistent worldsheet description.Comment: v2-references added; v3-minor correction (eqn. 4.17

Unitarity in Dirichlet Higgs Model

We show that a five dimensional Universal Extra Dimension model, compactified on a line segment, is consistently formulated even when the gauge symmetry is broken solely by non-zero Dirichlet boundary conditions on a bulk Higgs field, without any quartic interaction. We find that the longitudinal W+W- elastic scattering amplitude, under the absence of the Higgs zero-mode, is unitarized by exchange of infinite towers of KK Higgs bosons. Resultant amplitude scales linearly with the scattering energy, exhibiting five dimensional nature. A tree-level partial-wave unitarity condition is satisfied up to 6.7 (5.7) TeV for the KK scale 430 (500) GeV, favored by the electroweak data within 90% CL.Comment: 14pages, 2 figures (v1); References added (v2); Trivial error corrected: u -> t and \cos\theta -> -\cos\theta, references added (v3); comments added, a reference added, version to appear in Eur. Phys. J. C (v4); Expressions matched to EPJC style, obsolete affiliation (on leave) has been removed (v5