International Research Fellowship Program: Nongeometric Compactifications and String Theory

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0402111WilliamsThe International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will support a twenty-two-month research fellowship by Dr. Brookie P. Williams to work with Dr. Jan de Boer at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.Along with the usual geometric symmetries present in more traditional quantum field theories, string theory has additional symmetries which are inherently ``stringy" in nature. Following the work of Hellerman, McGreevy and Williams (2002), this research exploits the existence of these stringy symmetries to find a new class of ``nongeometric'' compactifications. These symmetries allow one to impose boundary conditions which force the moduli (parameters which describe the size and shape of the internal manifold) to vary over spaces in which the B-field (the ``electromagnetic'' potential which couples to the fundamental string) and the geometry are treated on equal footing.The B-field and geometry cannot be disentangled from one another; it is in this sense that these compactifications are considered to be ``nongeometric''. Understanding these compactifications is a crucial step in understanding what structures at the quantum level may replace our classical notions of geometry and serve as potentially important arenas for string phenomenology.