Heterotic and M-theory Compactifications for String Phenomenology

Understand

In this thesis, we explore two approaches to string phenomenology.

• In the first half of the work, we investigate M-theory compactifications on spaces with co-dimension four, orbifold singularities.
• We construct M-theory on C^2/Z_N by coupling 11-dimensional supergravity to a seven-dimensional Yang-Mills theory located on the orbifold fixed-plane.
• The resulting action is supersymmetric to leading non-trivial order in the 11-dim Newton constant.