Abstract:
If string theory is to be a theory of Nature, it must reproduce the observed Standard Model of particle physics in a certain limit. Although it is widely believed to be the case, so far there is no explicit construction of the Standard Model in string theory. There are many approaches to this problem, using various string constructions. Perhaps the most successful approach is based on compactifications of heterotic string theory. In this construction, extracting low-energy physics from string theory reduces to a well-defined problem in algebraic geometry, which can be addressed from a purely mathematical viewpoint. In this talk I will summarize this construction and define the associated algebro-geometric problem. I will also briefly comment (perhaps) on our recently proposed 'solution' (hep-th/0512149 and hep-th/0602096) which gives exactly the massless spectrum of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model and semi-realistic tri-linear couplings in the low-energy superpotential.
