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(22.10.) String defects, supersymmetry and the swampland
Quentin Bonnefoy (DESY)
22.10.2020 at 16:15
Kim, Shiu and Vafa recently presented arguments that rule out consistent supergravity theories in 10 and 6d, based on the fact that they cannot be consistently coupled to a complete spectrum of string defects. The conditions they enforce are expressed in a pure effective theory language, however one may want to understand the origin of these constraints from a microscopic string picture. That allows to test their relevance and to possibly extend them, for instance to non-supersymmetric setups. I will therefore present tests of the conditions of Kim, Shiu and Vafa in perturbative 6d orientifold constructions, supersymmetric or of the brane supersymmetry breaking type. In the latter case, the supersymmetric conditions still hold if the string defect does not overlap with the SUSY breaking source. The general discussion will also lead me to propose a “null string conjecture”, that allows to exclude some 6d supergravity theories that have no known string or F-theory realization. The talk is based on arXiv:2007.12722 [hep-th], in collaboration with C. Angelantonj, C. Condeescu and E. Dudas.
Arnold Sommerfeld Center
Theresienstrasse 37
Room 348
via ZOOM