String theory and its applications

1 Sept 2014, 08:00 → 26 Sept 2014, 18:00 Europe/Berlin

The program builds on two closely intertwined pillars: string phenomenology and gauge-string duality (‘gauge/gravity duality’). Topics in string phenomenology and string cosmology include the status of supersymmetry, the emergence of extra dimensions and the Higgs mechanism in string compactifications as well as implications of the preliminary LHC results on new gauge bosons and light string excitations. Further topics include stringy candidates for the dark sector, inflation, quark and lepton flavor structures in string theory; in the context of gauge/gravity duality, gauge mediation of supersymmetry breaking, the computation of scattering amplitudes using gauge-string dualities and newly developed perturbative methods using heavy forefront mathematics in theories with various amounts of supersymmetry and numerous advances in different aspects of field theories at strong coupling. Moreover, gauge/gravity duality relates black holes on the one hand with strongly coupled systems on the other. These systems include gauge theories at strong coupling with applications to the QCD phase diagram, as well as critical phenomena in condensed matter physics such as superconductivity. Both directions, string phenomenology and gauge/gravity duality, build on the same computational and mathematical methods, making an interchange between the two communities particularly fruitful.
Application deadline: 28 February 2014 (Later applications are possible until all places are filled)

The last week 22-26 September 2014 hosts the annual conference of the COST Action "The String Theory Universe", see https://indico.mitp.uni-mainz.de/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=15  for details.

Dates of Participants Participants_String_theory.pdf

Monday 1 September

10:00 → 10:30 Welcome by the MITP Director

11:30 → 13:00 Valandro - U(1)'s in F-theory/type IIB duality

Tuesday 2 September

11:30 → 13:00 Anderson - New aspects of Heterotic/F-theory Duality

16:00 → 17:30 Discussion: Achievements of F-theory in past 5 years and prospects

Wednesday 3 September

11:30 → 13:00 Savelli - F-theory on singular spaces

16:00 → 17:30 Discussion: Has the field become too technical?

Thursday 4 September

11:30 → 13:00 Gray - Some constructions and properties of Calabi-Yau fourfolds

Friday 5 September

11:30 → 13:00 Hayashi - (p, q) webs and Nekrasov partition functions

Abstract: We establish a method to compute the Nekrasov partition functions of theories which arises from (p, q) 5-brane webs or M-theory compactifications on their dual Calabi-Yau threefolds.The theories include certain non-Lagrangian theories such as the T_N theory. For that, it is important to remove the contributions which are decoupled from the theory. The web diagram encodes the decoupled contributions in a simple way.We also develop a prescription to compute the instanton partition functions of theories which are obtained by the Higgsing the T_N theory. The theories include the Sp(1) gauge theories with 6 or 7 flavors which have E7 or E8 flavor symmetry respectively at their fixed points.

14:30 → 15:30 Faraggi - string phenomenology: past, present and future

Monday 8 September

10:30 → 12:00 Ewerz - Applications of holography to strongly coupled plasmas

15:30 → 16:15 Tarrio: Holographic RG flows of d=3 super-Yang-Mills theories with fundamental degrees of freedom

Tuesday 9 September

10:30 → 12:00 Filev: A Quantum Critical Point from Flavours on a Compact Space

15:30 → 16:15 Meyer: Towards a holographic Bose-Hubbard model

16:30 → 17:10 Patrushev: Entanglement in field theory and extrinsic geometry

Wednesday 10 September

10:30 → 12:00 O'Bannon - A Holographic Model of the Kondo Effect

15:30 → 16:15 Wu: A Holographic Model of the Kondo Effect: Part II

16:15 → 17:00 Zhang, Hai-Qing: Quasi-normal modes and time evolution of a holographic superconductor after a quantum quench

Thursday 11 September

10:30 → 12:00 Krippendorf: De Sitter vacua with chiral matter and softly broken supersymmetry

15:30 → 16:15 Mosaffa: Quantum Local Quench, AdS/BCFT and Yo-Yo String

Friday 12 September

10:30 → 12:00 Pradisi: Orbifolds and wrapping rules

Monday 15 September

11:30 → 13:00 Ammon: Recent progress in higher spin AdS/CFT correspondence -- Exploring the symmetries and spacetime notion of string theory

15:30 → 16:15 Kundu: Thermalization and Chemical Potential: a Toy Model from Holography

16:15 → 17:00 Iatrakis: The spectrum of holographic V-QCD at finite temperature and chemical potential

Tuesday 16 September

11:30 → 13:00 Klevers: Progress on Abelian and discrete gauge groups in F-theory -- the geometry of the gauge theory sector in quantum gravity

15:30 → 16:15 Massai - Metastability in bubbling AdS space

16:15 → 17:00 Zhang, Hongbao: Holographic Peierls metal-insulator transition

Wednesday 17 September

11:30 → 13:00 Petrini: Generalised Geometry for string compactifications and holography

15:30 → 16:15 Surowka: Parity violation and sound interactions in (2+1)-dimensional hydrodynamics

16:15 → 17:00 Krikun: Baryon and chiral symmetry breaking in holographic QCD

Thursday 18 September

11:30 → 13:00 Russo: Localization in supersymmetric gauge theories: exact results and some applications

15:30 → 16:15 Arean: Disordered Holographic Superconductors

16:15 → 17:00 Seki: EPR = ER and Scattering

Friday 19 September

11:30 → 13:00 Marotta: Low-energy behaviour of string amplitudes

14:15 → 15:00 Musaev: Exceptional field theory: U-duality covariance