On the Phenomenology of String-Theory: Contact with Particle Physics and Cosmology

On the Phenomenology of String-Theory: Contact with Particle Physics and Cosmology A brief discussion is presented assessing the achievements and challenges of string phenomenology:
the subfield dedicated to study the potential for string-theory to make contact with particle
physics and cosmology. Building from the well understood case of the standard model as a very
particular example within quantum field theory we highlight the very few generic observable implications of string theory, most of them inaccessible to low-energy experiments, and indicate the need to extract concrete scenarios and classes of models that could eventually be contrasted with
searches in collider physics and other particle experiments as well as in cosmological observations.
The impact that this subfield has had in mathematics and in a better understanding of string-theory is emphasised as spin-offs of string phenomenology. Moduli fields, measuring the size and
shape of extra dimensions, are highlighted as generic low-energy remnants of string-theory that
can play a key role for supersymmetry breaking as well as for inflationary and post-inflationary
early universe cosmology. It is argued that the answer to the question in the title should be, as
usual, No. Future challenges for this field are briefly mentioned. This essay is a contribution to
arXiv:1612.01569v1 [hep-th] 5 Dec 2016
the conference: “Why Trust a Theory?”, Munich, December 2015.