Related papers: Gravity from strings: personal reminiscence on ear…
In this article, prepared for the book "The birth of string theory", I recall the sequence of ideas which led to non-critical strings and gauge/strings duality. I also comment on some promising future directions.
One of the major developments of twentieth century physics has been the gradual recognition that a common feature of the known fundamental interactions is their gauge structure. In this article the authors review the early history of gauge…
String theory has been initially derived from motivations coming from strong interaction phenomenology,but its application faced deep conceptual and practical difficulties. The strong interactions found their theoretical foundation…
Much of modern string theory research concerns AdS/CFT duality, or more generally, gauge/gravity duality. The main subjects are a) Testing and understanding such dualities by exploring how they work for systems with a lot of supersymmetry…
The search for a theory of quantum gravity faces two great challenges: the incredibly small scales of the Planck length and time, and the possibility that the observed constants of nature are in part the result of random processes. A…
I describe our understanding of physics near the planck length, in particular the great progress of the last four years in string theory. Superstring theory, and a recent extension called M theory, are leading candidates for a quantum…
The goal of this article is to present a broad perspective on quantum gravity for \emph{non-experts}. After a historical introduction, key physical problems of quantum gravity are illustrated. While there are a number of interesting and…
This is a brief overview on the current status of string theory for non-specialists. The purpose is to give an aspect on the nature of string theory as a unified theory of all interactions including quantum gravity and to discuss future…
This is an invited contribution to the Special Issue of "Foundations of Physics" titled "Forty Years Of String Theory: Reflecting On the Foundations". I have been asked to assess string theory as an outsider, and to compare it with the…
We discuss string theory relations between gravity and gauge theory tree amplitudes. Together with $D$-dimensional unitarity, these relations can be used to perturbatively quantize gravity theories, i.e. they contain the necessary…
The status of string theory is reviewed, and major recent developments - especially those in going beyond perturbation theory in the string theory and quantum field theory frameworks - are discussed. This analysis helps better understand…
The first part of this report gives a very quick sketch of how string theory concepts originated and evolved during its first 25 years (1968-93). The second part presents a somewhat more detailed discussion of the highlights of the past…
An assessment is offered of the progress that the major approaches to quantum gravity have made towards the goal of constructing a complete and satisfactory theory. The emphasis is on loop quantum gravity and string theory, although other…
In this talk we discuss the need to introduce a string theory in order to obtain a consistent quantum theory of gravity unified with gauge interactions. We then discuss some basic properties of string theory and the origin and the…
We present an overview of the intimate relationship between string and D-brane dynamics, and the dynamics of gauge and gravitational fields in three spacetime dimensions. The successes, prospects and open problems in describing both…
We present a bird's-eye survey on the development of fundamental ideas of quantum gravity, placing emphasis on perturbative approaches, string theory, loop quantum gravity, and black hole thermodynamics. The early ideas at the dawn of…
This paper analyzes the effective field theory perspective on modern physics through the lens of the quantum theory of gravitational interaction. The historical part argues that the search for a theory of quantum gravity stimulated the…
The problem of reconciling general relativity and quantum theory has fascinated and bedeviled physicists for more than 70 years. Despite recent progress in string theory and loop quantum gravity, a complete solution remains out of reach. I…
String theory has been the dominating research field in theoretical physics during the last decades. Despite the considerable time elapse, no new testable predictions have been derived by string theorists and it is understandable that…
I briefly review the current status of quantum gravity. After giving some general motivations for the need of such a theory, I discuss the main approaches in quantizing general relativity: Covariant approaches (perturbation theory,…