Particle Physics from String Theory: How far have we come?
by
Salle des sommets
LAPTh
String theory has all the generic features to account for known fundamental physics - it contains gravity, gauge theories, it facilitates family replication of matter, it allows for the possibility of a Higgs multiplet and low-energy symmetry breaking etc. However, finding a concrete string model which realises the standard model of particular physics in detail is less than straightforward, both from a conceptual and a technical point of view. In this talk I will discuss the effort to find such a model, at first pass at the level of the low-energy particle content, and, more ambitiously, at the level of coupling constants. Calculating coupling constants, such as Yukawa couplings, directly from string theory is technically challenging. I will explain how recent progress in numerical methods, specifically numerical methods based on machine learning, have helped to overcome some of the obstacles.