# String Seminars

This series consists of talks in the area of Superstring Theory.

## Seminar Series Events/Videos

Currently there are no upcoming talks in this series.

## Non-conformal holography

Tuesday Nov 18, 2008
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We discuss holography for geometries that are asymptotic to non-conformal brane backgrounds. The near-horizon limit of all non-conformal branes, including D-branes and the fundamental string but excluding five-branes, is conformal to $AdS_{p+2} imes S^{8-p}$ with a linear dilaton. They exhibit a generalized conformal structure, both on the QFT and on the gravitational side. We develop holographic renormalization for all these cases and discuss a number of applications.

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## Generating Tree Amplitudes in N=4 SYM and N=8 Super-Gravity

Tuesday Nov 11, 2008
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TBA

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## Torsion and the Holography of Parity Breaking

Thursday Nov 06, 2008
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TBA

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## SUSY breaking and gauge mediation in G-Theory GUTs

Tuesday Nov 04, 2008

TBA

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## M2-branes and AdS/CFT Correspondence

Tuesday Oct 28, 2008
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TBA

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## Reflecting magnons from D-branes

Tuesday Oct 21, 2008
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The discovery of integrability in the large N limit of the prototypical realization of the AdS/CFT correspondence has raised the hope that the spectrum of scale dimensions in N=4 SYM (and strings in AdS_5 x S^5) might be known exactly, i.e. to all orders in the coupling constant. So far, most of the efforts focused on closed strings and periodic boundary conditions. In this talk I will discuss how these ideas are extended to open string and open boundary conditions.

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## Q7-branes in type IIB string theory

Tuesday Oct 14, 2008
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We review basic properties of effective worldvolume theory describing the dynamics of Dirichlet branes in type II supergravity backgrounds and then show that the SL(2,R) symmetry of IIB supergravity allows for the existence of new supersymmetric 7-brane configurations called Q7-branes. The Q7-branes differ from the D7-branes, in particular, by their coupling to the dilaton, axion and to `magnetic\' gauge field duals thereof.

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## Anthropic explanation of the dark matter abundance in models with high-scale axions

Tuesday Oct 07, 2008
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TBA

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## Exotic Phases and Phase Transitions from Geometrical Frustration

Tuesday Sep 30, 2008
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In frustrated systems, competing interactions lead to complex phase diagrams and sometimes entirely new states of matter. Frustration often arises from the lattice geometry, leaving the system delicately balanced between a variety of possible orders. A number of normally weak effects can lead to a lifting of this degeneracy. For example, I will discuss how quantum fluctuations can stabilize a supersolid phase, where the system is at once both a crystal and a superfluid.

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## String creation and effective field theory

Tuesday Sep 16, 2008

We will discuss the missing pieces in the understanding of the effective field theory description of string creation, the T-dual of the Hanany-Witten effect, both in the open and closed string picture. We explain the origin of the \'bare\' Chern-Simons term, so far added in by hand. There however remain unsettled issues concerning the need to modify the DBI action and the interpretation of this term in M-theory.

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## RECENT PUBLIC LECTURE

### Mario Livio: Brilliant Blunders

Speaker: Mario Livio