Backreacting fluxes and branes in F-theory via M-theory

Abstract

We start this thesis by reviewing the basics of F-theory and related concepts. Then we summarize shortly the main features of AdS/CFT for D3/D7-brane systems, most importantly the relation between the RG flow and the dilaton profile, to be able to investigate whether F-theory could provide meaningful insights in this context. After these preliminaries, we construct geometries to describe Type IIB configurations via M-theory. Most notably, we found a novel periodic Atiyah-Hitchin space, which describes a system of D7-branes in the presence of an O7-plane, provided we include Kaluza-Klein monopoles in the geometry. Another new result we found, is that M2-branes in such a geometry reproduce the backreaction of D3-branes on the near-horizon geometry of D7-branes. We also derived the warp factor for the backreaction of 7-brane fluxes on the periodic Atiyah-Hitchin space.