Abstract

While the appearance of non-Abelian gauge symmetries had been well understood since the early days of F-theory, until recently their Abelian counterparts remained largely unexamined. Boosted by progress in controlling globally well-defined F-theory compactifications that are essential to U(1)s, our understanding of Abelian gauge symmetries in F-theory has improved significantly over the last couple of years.

In this talk the speaker begins by reviewing F-theory as a framework for studying strongly coupled Type IIB vacua. He proceeds with discussing how to obtain F-theory low-energy effective actions with Abelian gauge symmetries and comment on the observed absence of anomalies. Furthermore, he will give an overview of the mathematical methods involved in constructing F-theory vacua with U(1) symmetries.

The seminar is free and open to all. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.

HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study
Enquiries: ias@ust.hk / 2358 5912
http://ias.ust.hk