F(rench)-theory

Ok, everybody made speculations about the meaning of the F in F-theory. Possibly the most accepted one was that it was due to Cumrumm Va(F)a. But an article appearing now in arxiv has shown it's real origin.

The authors of the article are Adil Belha and Leila Medari. It is titled "Superstrings, Phenomenology and F-theory". the abstract reads:

We give brief ideas on building gauge models in superstring theory, especially the four-dimensional models obtained from the compactification of F-theory. According to Vafa, we discuss the construction of F-theory to approach non-perturbative aspects of type IIB superstring. Then, we present local models of F-theory, which can generate new four-dimensional gauge models with applications to phenomenology.

It is based on invited talks given by A. Belhaj in Oviedo, Rabat, Zaragoza.

Untill here nothing seems to support my claim of the explanation of the origin of the name. But if you go and see the paper, available in: http://arxiv.org/pdf/0912.5295 one finds that it is written in French. That explains all it ;-).

Fortunately I have a relatively good knowledge of French and I could make a quick reading of the article. It is a good introduction to the topic, from the very beguining explaining the basics of string theory, D-branes and all that. Later it explains the basics of F-theory, of local models and of local F-theory GUT models. All of it in a short article of 15 pages.

Despite the name it doesn't dive too much into phenomenology. But still it gives a good introduction to many aspects of the subject for non initiated people. In that sense it is far better than the blog entry of Jackes Distler about the first big paper of Vafa. And, definitively, it looks like a good chance for Spanish people people interested in the subject but not speaking English and maybe speaking French.

By the way, for those that didn't read the Spanish entry about the CDMS announcement just say that F-theory GUTS predicts that the LSP (lightest supersymmetric partner) is the gravitino, which is not a viable candidate for a WIMP. The CDMS two events finding (irrespective of how statistically significant it could be) is kind of a hint that the LSP is a WIMP (maybe a neutralino) so if confirmed the actual Vafa models of F-theory GUT would become invalidated. Possibly the experts on the subject could recook some aspects of the more phenomenological aspects of the theory (mainly the supersymmetry breaking mechanism) to fit the new data. But certainly the best aspect of the whole construction, reproducing the standard model and make concrete predictions, would go away.

But, as Vafa said in the strings 2009 conferences. That's the bad point of making predictions, that they could be invalidated.

If someone is interested in knowing it I must say that since the CDMS announcement I have decided to study in more detail what heterotic phenomenology can offer. It doesn't mean that F-theory is not interesting any more, but irrespectively of the CDMS I needed to pay more attention to heterotic theories. The CDMS is just a good excuse.

Also I am reading (and in some cases rereading) a lot of articles in black holes (stringy and not stringy ones). You can read about it in my other blog (if you speak Spanish). Still I guess that I will also talk about the subject in this blog in a near future, when I have finished reading carefully a few bunch of articles. For example, today there is an article about the subject of B-h creation in particle collisions: http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.5481.

Other interesting articles today in arxiv are: Unification of Residues and Grassmannian Dualities by Nima Arkani-Hamed, Jacob Bourjaily, Freddy Cachazo and Jaroslav Trnka. The article continuate the MHV program to give a twistorial technique to find scattering amplitudes. I must admit that although I recognize it's interest I am not following too much that developments. Still I think some readers can find it more attractive than me.

Also I would note two papers in dark energy:

Inverse problem - reconstruction of dark energy models

Abstract:

We review how we can construct the gravity models which reproduces the arbitrary development of the universe. We consider the reconstruction in the Einstein gravity coupled with generalized perfect fluid, scalar-Einstein gravity, scalar-Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity, Einstein-$F(G)$-gravity, and $F(R)$-gravity. Very explicit formulas are given to reconstruct the models, which could be used when we find the detailed data of the development of the universe by future observations. Especially we find the formulas using e-foldings, which has a direct relation with observed redshift. As long as we observe the time development of the Hubble rate $H$, there exists a variety of models describing the arbitrary development of universe.

The F(R) theories of the subject refers to approaches where one consider gravity theories with terms in the lagrangian that contain higher order terms in the curvature that appear as counterterms in the renormaliztion program of conventinal quantum gravity (the theory actually is not enormalizable because of the need of infinite diferent terms). There was recently a good review article about the subject and if I have time to read it I will post about that kind of theories.

Also about dark energy is a paper by A. M. Polyakov: Decay of Vacuum Energy .

Abstract:

This paper studies interacting massive particles on the de Sitter background. It is found that in some cases (depending on even/odd dimensionality of space, spins, masses and couplings of the involved particles etc) the vacuum acts as an inversely populated medium which is able to generate the stimulated radiation. This "cosmic laser" mechanism depletes the curvature and perhaps may help to solve the cosmological constant problem. The effect is more robust in the odd dimensional space-time, while in the even case additional assumptions are needed.

Polyakov is a very original thinker, and despite that sometimes it's ideas seems a bit non conventional it always worth reading him.

Possibly there are more interesting papers in axiv today, but I'll stop here.

Good new year to all readers.