Aspects of compactification and holography in string theory
Chang Shih Chan · CERN Document Server (European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2003
In this thesis, we explore several aspects of compactification and holography in open and closed string theories. We begin by reviewing the necessary background, tools and motivation for studying brane-worlds and noncommutative open string theory. We then give a short review of a large class of warped string geometries obtained via F-theory compactified on Calabi-Yau fourfolds. These theories upon reduction to 5 dimensions give consistent supersymmetric realizations of the Randall-Sundrum compactification scenario for brane- worlds. We also show how the AdS/CFT correspondence can be applied within the context of warped compactification to give a new perspective on the physics of gravitational collapse. Next, we construct chiral N = 1 gauge theories in 4D by compactifying the 6D Blum-Intriligator (1, 0) theories of 5-branes at Ak singularities on T 2 with a nontrivial bundle of the global U(1) symmetry of these theories. We end by investigating the complete phase diagram of the decoupled world-sheet theory of (P, Q) strings. These theories include 1+1 dimensional super Yang-Mills theory and non- commutative open string theory. We find that the system exhibits a rich fractal phase structure, including a cascade of alternating supergravity, gauge theory, and matrix string theory phases.