Standard Model Engineering with Intersecting Branes

Abstract

I briefly describe the recent construction of the first specific string D-brane models yielding just the SM massless fermion spectrum. One of the most remarkable facts predicted by these constructions is that the global symmetries of the SM like Baryon and Lepton numbers as well as the axial $U(1)_A$ are gauged symmetries whose anomalies are cancelled by a Green-Schwarz mechanism only in the case of three quark-lepton generations. Proton stability and the Dirac nature of neutrino masses are thus a prediction of these theories. This is work done in collaboration with Fernando Marchesano and Raul Rabadan.