School of Physics

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Research Content for the School of Physics. Researchers in the School of the Physics.

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    Testing R-parity with geometry
    (Springer Verlag, 2016-03) He, Y.-H.; Jejjala, V.; Matti, C.; Nelson, B.D.
    We present a complete classification of the vacuum geometries of all renormalizable superpotentials built from the fields of the electroweak sector of the MSSM. In addition to the Severi and affine Calabi-Yau varieties previously found, new vacuum manifolds are identified; we thereby investigate the geometrical implication of theories which display a manifest matter parity (or R-parity) via the distinction between leptonic and Higgs doublets, and of the lepton number assignment of the right-handed neutrino fields. We find that the traditional R-parity assignments of the MSSM more readily accommodate the neutrino see-saw mechanism with non-trivial geometry than those superpotentials that violate R-parity. However there appears to be no geometrical preference for a fundamental Higgs bilinear in the superpotential, with operators that violate lepton number, such as (Formula presented.) , generating vacuum moduli spaces equivalent to those with a fundamental bilinear.
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    Spin(7) compactifications and 1/4-BPS vacua in heterotic supergravity.
    (Springer Verlag, 2016-03) Angus, S.; Matti, C.; Svanes, E.E.
    We continue the investigation into non-maximally symmetric compactifications of the heterotic string. In particular, we consider compactifications where the internal space is allowed to depend on two or more external directions. For preservation of supersymmetry, this implies that the internal space must in general be that of a Spin(7) manifold, which leads to a 1/4-BPS four-dimensional supersymmetric perturbative vacuum breaking all but one supercharge. We find that these solutions allow for internal geometries previously excluded by the domain-wall-type solutions, and hence the resulting four-dimensional superpotential is more generic. In particular, we find an interesting resemblance to the superpotentials that appear in non-geometric flux compactifications of type II string theory. If the vacua are to be used for phenomenological applications, they must be lifted to maximal symmetry by some non-perturbative or higher-order effect.