Narrow Results

We study the cohomological physics of fivebranes in type II and heterotic string theory. We give an interpretation of the one-loop term in type IIA, which involves the first and second Pontrjagin classes of spacetime, in terms of obstructions to having bundles with certain structure groups. Using a generalization of the Green–Schwarz anomaly cancellation in heterotic string theory which demands the target space to have a String structure, we observe that the "magnetic dual" version of the anomaly cancellation condition can be read as a higher analog of String structure, which we call Fivebrane structure. This involves lifts of orthogonal and unitary structures through higher connected covers which are not just 3- but even 7-connected. We discuss the topological obstructions to the existence of Fivebrane structures. The dual version of the anomaly cancellation points to a relation of string and Fivebrane structures under electric-magnetic duality.

We address some issues of renormalization and symmetries of effective field theories with unstable particles - resonances. We also calculate anomalous contributions in the divergence of the singlet axial current in an effective field theory of massive SU(N) Yang-Mills fields interacting with fermions and discuss their possible relevance to the strong CP problem.