The structure of stringy quantum corrections to four-dimensional effective theories is particularly interesting for string phenomenology and attempts to stabilize moduli. We consider the heterotic string compactified on a Calabi-Yau space. For this case, we compute the leading corrections to the kinetic terms of moduli fields. The structure of these corrections is largely dictated by the underlying higher-dimensional extended supersymmetry. We find corrections generically of order α ′ 2 rather than of order α ′ 3 found in type II compactifications or heterotic compactifications with the standard embedding. We explore the implications of these corrections for breaking no-scale structure.

We generalize to the eleven-dimensional superparticle Berkovits' prescription for loop computations in the pure spinor approach to covariant quantization of the superstring. Using these ten-and eleven-dimensional results, we compute covariantly the following one-loop amplitudes: C ∧ X 8 in M-theory; B ∧ X 8 in type II string theory and F 4 in type I. We also verify the consistency of the formalism in eleven dimensions by recovering the correct classical action from tree-level amplitudes. As the superparticle is only a first approximation to the supermembrane, we comment on the possibility of extending this construction to the latter. Finally, we elaborate on the relationship between the present BRST language and the spinorial cohomology approach to corrections of the effective action.

We present a detailed study of the finite-temperature behaviour of the LARGE Volume type IIB flux compactifications. We show that certain moduli can thermalise at high temperatures. Despite that, their contribution to the finite-temperature effective potential is always negligible and the latter has a runaway behaviour. We compute the maximal temperature T max , above which the internal space decompactifies, as well as the temperature T * , that is reached after the decay of the heaviest moduli. The natural constraint T * < T max implies a lower bound on the allowed values of the internal volume V. We find that this restriction rules out a significant range of values corresponding to smaller volumes of the order V ∼ 10 4 l 6 s , which lead to standard GUT theories. Instead, the bound favours values of the order V ∼ 10 15 l 6 s , which lead to TeV scale SUSY desirable for solving the hierarchy problem. Moreover, our result favours low-energy inflationary scenarios with density perturbations generated by a field, which is not the inflaton. In such a scenario, one could achieve both inflation and TeV-scale SUSY, although gravity waves would not be observable. Finally, we pose a two-fold challenge for the solution of the cosmological moduli problem. First, we show that the heavy moduli decay before they can begin to dominate the energy density of the Universe. Hence they are not able to dilute any unwanted relics. And second, we argue that, in order to obtain thermal inflation in the closed string moduli sector, one needs to go beyond the present EFT description.

We investigate a model of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking via a dual gravitational description. The gravity dual is obtained by embedding a D7-D7 pair of branes into a type IIB background that is dual to a walking gauge theory. We develop further a previous study of this model. In particular, we show that there is a nontrivial relation that needs to be satisfied in order for axial-vector modes to exist.Furthermore, we compute explicitly the electroweak S parameter. The result is positive-definite and, as was to be expected, much smaller than in earlier QCD-like D-brane constructions. We also find the masses and decay constants of the vector and axial-vector mesons in this model. This allows us to obtain another estimate for S by summing the contributions of the discrete states. It is noteworthy that, in contrast to previous holographic studies, the sum of the first several lowest-lying states does give a very good approximation to the full answer.

We investigate quantum corrections to the effective action of the universal hypermultiplet in the language of projective superspace. We rederive the recently found one-loop correction to the universal hypermultiplet moduli space geometry. The deformed metric is described as a superspace action in terms of a single function, homogeneous of first degree. Our framework leads us to a natural proposal for the nonperturbative moduli space metric induced by five-brane instantons.