A Nonperturbative Construction of the IIA/IIB Domain Wall
Date: 09 APRIL 2026 from 11:30 to 12:30
Event location: IR-1A
A Nonperturbative Construction of the IIA/IIB Domain Wall
Abstract:
Motivated by robust bottom-up expectations of quantum gravity, it was conjectured in [Distler, Freed, Moore'09] and [McNamara, Vafa'19] that there exists a finite energy domain wall separating Type IIA and Type IIB string theories in 10D. Such a domain wall would necessarily be non-supersymmetric and has no known formulation in string perturbation theory. In this talk, I will detail a nonperturbative construction of such a domain wall in the setting of discrete lightcone quantizations of Type II string theories developed in the late '90s. This IIA/IIB domain wall is lightlike, and satisfies several expected properties that such a wall would have, including the fact that BPS Dp branes become non-BPS Dp branes when crossing the wall, and vice-versa. If time permits, I will also discuss how similar constructions may exist for several recently conjectured non-BPS branes in string theory.