Related papers: String Free Energy, Hagedorn and Gauge/String Dual…
Massless scalar electrodynamics is studied at high temperature and zero chemical potential. I derive the free energy to order $\lambda^2$, $\lambda e^2$ and $e^4$ by effective field theory methods. The first step consists of the…
The energy spectrum of a system containing a static quark anti-quark pair is computed for a wide range of source separations using lattice QCD with $N_\mathrm{f}=2+1$ dynamical flavours. By employing a variational method with a basis…
We show that hadrons in QCD follow a spectrum determined by string dynamics characterized by a universal Hagedorn temperature linked to the string tension. While this behavior was recently established for light hadrons and glueballs, we…
The status of gaugino condensation in low-energy string theory is reviewed. Emphasis is given to the determination of the efective action below condensation scale in terms of the 2PI and Wilson actions. We illustrate how the different…
The thermal duality of E(8) x E(8) and SO(32) heterotic string theories may underpin a mechanism that would convert the kinetic energy of infalling matter during gravitational collapse to form a region of a hot string phase that would expel…
We consider the critical behavior for a string theory near the Hagedorn temperature. We use the factorization of the worldsheet to isolate the Hagedorn divergences at all genera. We show that the Hagedorn divergences can be resummed by…
We discuss near-Hagedorn string thermodynamics in general spacetimes using the formalism of the thermal scalar. Building upon earlier work by Horowitz and Polchinski, we relate several properties of the thermal scalar field theory (i.e. the…
The phase diagram of QCD at finite temperature and density is discussed. Large numbers of quark colors, $N_{\rm c} >> 1$, is used to explain generic features of the phase diagram. For temperatures below $ T \le 160$~MeV at zero baryon…
We study the string tension as a function of temperature, fitting the SU(3) lattice QCD finite temperature free energy potentials computed by the Bielefeld group. We compare the string tension points with order parameter curves of…
We discuss vacuum energy in string and M-theory with a focus on heterotic M-theory. In the latter theory a mechanism is described for maintaining zero vacuum energy after supersymmetry breaking. Higher-order corrections can be expected to…
In this paper, we discuss the important question of how to extrapolate a given zero-temperature string model to finite temperature. It turns out that this issue is surprisingly subtle, and we show that many of the standard results require…
Well known results in string thermodynamics show that there is always a negative specific heat phase in the microcanonical description of a gas of closed free strings whenever there are no winding modes present. We will carefully compute…
I review recent progress on the connection between string theory and quantum chromodynamics in the context of the gauge/gravity duality. Emphasis is placed on conciseness and conceptual aspects rather than on technical details. Topics…
The thermodynamics of a gas of strings and D-branes near the Hagedorn transition is described by a coupled set of Boltzmann equations for weakly interacting open and closed long strings. The resulting distributions are dominated by the open…
By using lessons learned from modern string studies, we show how interesting non-perturbative features of QCD can be learned from future heavy ion collisions even if the deconfinement density is not reached.
This talk begins with some history and basic facts about string theory and its connections with strong interactions. Comparisons of stacks of Dirichlet branes with curved backgrounds produced by them are used to motivate the AdS/CFT…
We show how an effective field theory of long distance QCD, describing a dual superconductor, can be expressed as an effective string theory of superconducting vortices. We evaluate the semiclassical expansion of this effective string…
Recently, string theory on some specific curved backgroud spacetime geometries has been conjectured to be equivalent to certain gauge theories (AdS/CFT correspondence). This correspondence may be used to investigate the non-perturbative…
We study the pure-gauge QCD phase transition at finite temperatures in the dual Ginzburg-Landau theory, an effective theory of QCD based on the dual Higgs mechanism. We formulate the effective potential at various temperatures by…
We consider an exactly solvable worldsheet string theory in the background of a black brane with a gauge field flux. Holographically, such a system can be interpreted as a field theory with finite number of degrees of freedom at finite…