Thomas Strobl

Title: Singular Spacetimes and Internal Curvature [pdf]
Abstract: We describe two different ideas from the perspective of physics, mathematized, however, by essentially the same technique using newly developed methods for the construction of gauge theories. The first of these ideas is the propagation of strings in a singular spacetime, described as a quotient of a mother manifold by a singular foliation. The second one relates to the standard model of particle physics: Viewed from the right angle, one may consider the gauge sector as a flat bundle over the space of values of the Higgs fields. Introducing curvature into this space, gives a non-trivial, mathematically and possibly physically interesting deformation of Yang-Mills-Higgs theories.