TASI Lectures on F-Theory
CERN-TH-2018-126 TASI Lectures on F-theory Timo Weigand1,2 1CERN, Theory Division, CH-1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland 2Institut f¨ur Theoretische Physik, Ruprecht-Karls-Universit¨at, Philosophenweg 19, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany Abstract F-theory is perhaps the most general currently available approach to study non-perturbative string compactifications in their geometric, large radius regime. It opens up a wide and ever- growing range of applications and connections to string model building, quantum gravity, (non- perturbative) quantum field theories in various dimensions and mathematics. Its computational power derives from the geometrisation of physical reasoning, establishing a deep correspondence between fundamental concepts in gauge theory and beautiful structures of elliptic fibrations. These lecture notes, which are an extended version of my lectures given at TASI 2017, introduce some of the main concepts underlying the recent technical advances in F-theory compactifications and their various applications. The main focus is put on explaining the F-theory dictionary between the local and global data of an elliptic fibration and the physics of 7-branes in Type IIB compactifications to arXiv:1806.01854v1 [hep-th] 5 Jun 2018 various dimensions via duality with M-theory. The geometric concepts underlying this dictionary include the behaviour of elliptic fibrations in codimension one, two, three and four, the Mordell-Weil group of rational sections, and the Deligne cohomology group specifying gauge backgrounds. Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Setting the stage for F-theory 3 2.1 Type IIB string theory, SL(2, Z) duality and [p,q]7-branes ............... 3 2.2 Elliptic curves, SL(2, Z)bundleandellipticfibrations .
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