TASI Lectures on Supergravity and String Vacua in Various Dimensions
arXiv:1104.2051
Abstract
These lectures aim to provide a global picture of the spaces of consistent quantum supergravity theories and string vacua in higher dimensions. The lectures focus on theories in the even dimensions 10, 8, and 6. Supersymmetry, along with with anomaly cancellation and other quantum constraints, places strong limitations on the set of physical theories which can be consistently coupled to gravity in higher-dimensional space-times. As the dimensionality of space-time decreases, the range of possible supergravity theories and the set of known string vacuum constructions expand. These lectures develop the basic technology for describing a variety of string vacua, including heterotic, intersecting brane, and F-theory compactifications. In particular, a systematic presentation is given of the basic elements of F-theory. In each dimension, we summarize the current state of knowledge regarding the extent to which supergravity theories not realized in string theory can be shown to be inconsistent.
97 pages, 9 figures; TASI lecture notes; v2: references added, minor improvements
References in corpus (8)
- Symmetries and Strings in Field Theory and Gravity
- Lectures on F-theory compactifications and model building
- New Aspects of Heterotic--F Theory Duality
- Global aspects of the space of 6D N = 1 supergravities
- Torsional Heterotic Geometries
- 6D supergravity without tensor multiplets
- Hypercharge Flux, Exotics, and Anomaly Cancellation in F-theory GUTs
- Quaternionic Kahler Manifolds, Constrained Instantons and the Magic Square: I