1:30 pm MCP 201
S-duality in 4D N = 4 and the D ≥ 5 String Landscape.
The string landscape with 16 supercharges consists of various connected components characterized by the gauge symmetries of their vacua. These components are interrelated by maps acting on gauge symmetry groups, and in dimensions D = 7,8 these maps are completely explained in terms of K3 frozen singularities. In this talk I present a procedure for physically realizing this map which is completely general and applicable in any string duality frame. This procedure involves S-duality in 4D N = 4 and its effect on flat gauge connections. It systematically recovers every known theory in D ≥ 6 and provides a classification scheme in 5D. In geometric frames it naturally realizes frozen singularities in a generalized sense.