Unification of space-time and internal symmetries through superstrings, with elementary or composite quarks

Symmetry properties of a given physical system constrain greatly the theoretical models built in the attempt to describe the system. In complement, the symmetry properties of a system typically undergo dramatic changes during its evolution in time, underpinning the concept of phase transitions. Employing these two ideas we analyze models of Particle Physics at increasingly higher levels of unification, attempting to cover the wide span from the domain of experimentally accessible energies to scales where all the known interactions (including gravity) may be described as low-energy effects of the tremendous and intricate structure of Superstring theories.

In particular, we study the scenario of compactification of the Heterotic Superstring theory involving Calabi-Yau manifolds and derive the basic properties of the effective point-field theory action, give a huge class of constructions and devise some techniques for future analysis. Further we study the possibility that the phase-transition from Superstrings to observed particles involves an intermediary phase where the observed particles exhibit compositeness, together with some consequences on the low-energy phenomenology. Finally we include our attempt to modify the SU(5) model, as one of the simplest Grand-unified models, to provide a solution to its difficulties. As we now show, the problems we were trying to address there are so generic that some of them remain (in a disguised form) even at the present understanding of the Superstring theories, the most ample constructs of fundamental Physics so far.