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F-theory is perhaps the most general currently available approach to study non-perturbative string compactifications in their geometric, large radius regime. It opens up a wide and ever-growing range of applications and connections to string model building, quantum gravity, (non-perturbative) quantum field theories in various dimensions and mathematics. Its computational power derives from the geometrisation of physical reasoning, establishing a deep correspondence between fundamental concepts in gauge theory and beautiful structures of elliptic fibrations. These lecture notes, which are an extended version of my lectures given at TASI 2017, introduce some of the main concepts underlying the recent technical advances in F-theory compactifications and their various applications. The main focus is put on explaining the F-theory dictionary between the local and global data of an elliptic fibration and the physics of 7-branes in Type IIB compactifications to various dimensions via duality with M-theory. The geometric concepts underlying this dictionary include the behaviour of elliptic fibrations in codimension one, two, three and four, the Mordell-Weil group of rational sections, and the Deligne cohomology group specifying gauge backgrounds. F-theory is probably the most general currently available approach to study non-perturbative string compactifications in their geometric, large radius regime. It opens up a wide and ever-growing range of applications and connections to string model building, quantum gravity, (non-perturbative) quantum field theories in various dimensions and mathematics. Its computational power derives from the geometrisation of physical reasoning, establishing a deep correspondence between fundamental concepts in gauge theory and beautiful structures of elliptic fibrations.These lecture notes, which are an extended version of my lectures given at TASI 2017, introduce some of the main concepts underlying the recent technical advances in F-theory compactifications and their various applications. The main focus is put on explaining the F-theory dictionary between the local and global data of an elliptic fibration and the physics of 7-branes in Type IIB compactifications to various dimensions via duality with M-theory. The geometric concepts underlying this dictionary include the behaviour of elliptic fibrations in codimension one, two, three and four, the Mordell-Weil group of rational sections, and the Deligne cohomology group specifying gauge backgrounds.

We study F-theory compactifications with up to two Abelian gauge group factors that are based on elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau 4-folds describable as generic hypersurfaces. Special emphasis is put on elliptic fibrations based on generic Bl^2 P^2[3]-fibrations. These exhibit a Mordell-Weil group of rank two corresponding to two extra rational sections which give rise to two Abelian gauge group factors. We show that an alternative description of the same geometry as a complete intersection makes the existence of a holomorphic zero-section manifest, on the basis of which we compute the U(1) generators and a class of gauge fluxes. We analyse the fibre degenerations responsible for the appearance of localised charged matter states, whose charges, interactions and chiral index we compute geometrically. We implement an additional SU(5) gauge group by constructing the four inequivalent toric tops giving rise to SU(5) x U(1) x U(1) gauge symmetry and analyse the matter content. We demonstrate that notorious non-flat points can be avoided in well-defined Calabi-Yau 4-folds. These methods are applied to the remaining possible hypersurface fibrations with one generic Abelian gauge factor. We analyse the local limit of our SU(5) x U(1) x U(1) models and show that one of our models is not embeddable into E8 due to recombination of matter curves that cannot be described as a Higgsing of E8. We argue that such recombination forms a general mechanism that opens up new model building possibilities in F-theory., Comment: 72 pages, 12 figures; v2: references added, typos corrected, matches version published in Nucl. Phys. B

We study the superpotential induced by Euclidean D3-brane instantons carrying instanton flux, with special emphasis on its significance for the stabilisation of Kahler moduli and Neveu-Schwarz axions in Type IIB orientifolds. Quite generally, once a chiral observable sector is included in the compactification, arising on intersecting D7-branes with world-volume flux, resulting charged instanton zero modes prevent a class of instantons from participating in moduli stabilisation. We show that instanton flux on Euclidean D3-branes can remove these extra zero modes and helps in reinstating full moduli stabilisation within a geometric regime. We comment also on the F-theoretic description of this effect of alleviating the general tension between moduli stabilisation and chirality. In addition we propose an alternative solution to this problem based on dressing the instantons with charged matter fields which is unique to F-theory and cannot be realised in the weak coupling limit., Comment: 9 pages in 2-column format; v2: refs added

The existence of abelian gauge symmetries in four-dimensional F-theory compactifications depends on the global geometry of the internal Calabi-Yau fourfold and has important phenomenological consequences. We study conceptual and phenomenological aspects of such U(1) symmetries along the Coulomb and the Higgs branch. As one application we examine abelian gauge factors arising after a certain global restriction of the Tate model that goes beyond a local spectral cover analysis. In SU(5) GUT models this mechanism enforces a global U(1)_X symmetry that prevents dimension-4 proton decay and allows for an identification of candidate right-handed neutrinos. We invoke a detailed account of the singularities of Calabi-Yau fourfolds and their mirror duals starting from an underlying E_8 and E_7 x U(1) enhanced Tate model. The global resolutions and deformations of these singularities can be used as the appropriate framework to analyse F-theory GUT models., Comment: 32 pages

We construct global F-theory GUT models on del Pezzo surfaces in compact Calabi-Yau fourfolds realized as complete intersections of two hypersurface constraints. The intersections of the GUT brane and the flavour branes as well as the gauge flux are described by the spectral cover construction. We consider a split S[U(4) x U(1)_X] spectral cover, which allows for the phenomenologically relevant Yukawa couplings and GUT breaking to the MSSM via hypercharge flux while preventing dimension-4 proton decay. General expressions for the massless spectrum, consistency conditions and a new method for the computation of curvature-induced tadpoles are presented. We also provide a geometric toolkit for further model searches in the framework of toric geometry. Finally, an explicit global model with three chiral generations and all required Yukawa couplings is defined on a Calabi-Yau fourfold which is fibered over the del Pezzo transition of the Fano threefold P^4[4]., Comment: 59 pages, 8 tables; v2: typos corrected, discussion of gauge coupling unification and various minor comments added; v3: more typos removed

We systematically analyse globally consistent SU(5) GUT models on intersecting D7-branes in genuine Calabi-Yau orientifolds with O3- and O7-planes. Beyond the well-known tadpole and K-theory cancellation conditions there exist a number of additional subtle but quite restrictive constraints. For the realisation of SU(5) GUTs with gauge symmetry breaking via U(1)_Y flux we present two classes of suitable Calabi-Yau manifolds defined via del Pezzo transitions of the elliptically fibred hypersurface P_{1,1,1,6,9}[18] and of the Quintic P_{1,1,1,1,1}[5], respectively. To define an orientifold projection we classify all involutions on del Pezzo surfaces. We work out the model building prospects of these geometries and present five globally consistent string GUT models in detail, including a 3-generation SU(5) model with no exotics whatsoever. We also realise other phenomenological features such as the 10 10 5 Yukawa coupling and comment on the possibility of moduli stabilisation, where we find an entire new set of so-called swiss-cheese type Calabi-Yau manifolds. It is expected that both the general constrained structure and the concrete models lift to F-theory vacua on compact Calabi-Yau fourfolds., Comment: 138 pages, 9 figures; v2, v3: typos corrected, one reference added

In this thesis we investigate a large new class of four-dimensional supersymmetric string vacua defined as compactifications of the $E_8 \times E_8$ and the $SO(32)$ heterotic string on smooth Calabi-Yau threefolds with unitary gauge bundles and heterotic five-branes. This opens up the way for phenomenologically interesting string compactifications on simply connected manifolds in that the conventional gauge symmetry breaking via Wilson lines is replaced by the embedding of non-flat line bundles into the ten-dimensional gauge group. The first part of the thesis discusses the implementation of this idea into the $E_8 \times E_8$ heterotic string. After specifying a large class of group theoretic embeddings featuring unitary bundles, we analyse the effective four-dimensional ${\cal N}=1$ supergravity upon compactification. The simultaneous presence of five-branes and abelian gauge groups requires the introduction of new anomaly cancelling counter terms into the effective action. These are also derived by an M-theory computation. The full set of Green-Schwarz terms allows for the extraction of the threshold corrections. From the gauge invariant K\"ahler potential for the moduli fields we derive a modification of the Fayet-Iliopoulos D-terms arising at one-loop in string perturbation theory. From this we conjecture a one-loop deformation of the Hermitian Yang-Mills equation and introduce the idea of $\lambda$-stability as the perturbatively correct stability concept generalising the notion of Mumford stability valid at tree-level. We then proceed to a definition of $SO(32)$ heterotic vacua with unitary gauge bundles in the presence of heterotic five-branes and find agreement of the resulting spectrum with the S-dual framework of Type I/Type IIB orientifolds. A similar analysis of the effective four-dimensional supergravity is performed. Further evidence for the proposed one-loop correction to the stability condition is found by identifying the heterotic corrections as the S-dual of the perturbative part of $\Pi$-stability as the correct stability concept in Type IIB theory. After reviewing the construction of holomorphic stable vector bundles on elliptically fibered Calabi-Yau manifolds via spectral covers, we provide semi-realistic examples for $SO(32)$ heterotic vacua with Pati-Salam and MSSM-like gauge sectors. These can be viewed, by S-duality, as the generalisation of toroidal magnetized $D9$-branes to non-abelian braneworlds on genuine Calabi-Yau manifolds. We finally discuss the construction of realistic vacua with flipped $SU(5)$ GUT and MSSM gauge group within the $E_8 \times E_8$ framework, based on the embedding of line bundles into both $E_8$ factors. Some of the appealing phenomenological properties of this stringy realisation of flipped $SU(5)$ models, in particular stability of the proton, are discussed. MSSM-like gauge coupling unification is possible for the threshold corrected gauge couplings. We explicitly construct a couple of supersymmetric string vacua in both setups with precisely the three observed chiral matter generations and without any exotic chiral states.