Black holes, BPS jumping, and special loci

I discuss, in an elementary way, special loci in the moduli spaces of string compactifications where the numbers of BPS states jump. In simple examples, these loci are also related to natural objects in number theory. Understanding of these loci leads to new results or conjectures about refined BPS partition functions, attractor black holes, and the counting of flux vacua.

Speaker: Shamit Kachru, Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics