Organizers: Johanna Erdmenger (MPI for Physics Munich), Mirjam Cvetic (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Fernando Marchesano (UAM/CSIC Madrid), Carlos Nunez (Swansea Univ.), Timo Weigand (Heidelberg Univ.), Gabriele Honecker (JGU Mainz)
September 1 - 26, 2014, JGU Campus Mainz
The program builds on two closely intertwined pillars: string phenomenology and gauge-string duality (‘gauge/gravity duality’). Topics in string phenomenology and string cosmology include the status of supersymmetry, the emergence of extra dimensions and the Higgs mechanism in string compactifications as well as implications of the preliminary LHC results on new gauge bosons and light string excitations. Further topics include stringy candidates for the dark sector, inflation, quark and lepton flavor structures in string theory; in the context of gauge/gravity duality, gauge mediation of supersymmetry breaking, the computation of scattering amplitudes using gauge-string dualities and newly developed perturbative methods using heavy forefront mathematics in theories with various amounts of supersymmetry and numerous advances in different aspects of field theories at strong coupling. Moreover, gauge/gravity duality relates black holes on the one hand with strongly coupled systems on the other. These systems include gauge theories at strong coupling with applications to the QCD phase diagram, as well as critical phenomena in condensed matter physics such as superconductivity. Both directions, string phenomenology and gauge/gravity duality, build on the same computational and mathematical methods, making an interchange between the two communities particularly fruitful.
