Thesis: Orientifolds, Anomalies and the Standard Model

Abstract

In this thesis, we study aspects of D-brane realizations of the Standard Model. Specifically, we study orientifold models with rotation and translation elements that break supersymmetry, provide the general consistency conditions and derive the massless spectrum for these type of orientifolds. These models contain in general anomalous U(1) gauge fields. The Green-Schwarz mechanism cancels the anomaly and provides a mass term for the anomalous gauge fields. We calculate the bare mass for supersymmetric and non-supersymmetric vacua and we show that higher dimensional anomalies can affect the masses of the anomalous U(1)s. Phenomenological aspects are also discussed. We evaluate the contribution of the extra U(1) fields to the anomalous moments and it is shown that this imposes constraints on the magnitude of the string scale.