Related papers: Gravity from strings: personal reminiscence on ear…
String theory implies a relatively modest growth in computational complexity for perturbative gravity calculations as compared to gauge theory calculations, contrary to field theory expectations. An explicit string-based calculation, which…
Superstring theory, and a recent extension called M theory, are leading candidates for a quantum theory that unifies gravity with the other forces. As such, they are certainly not ordinary quantum field theories. However, recent duality…
Duality, the equivalence between seemingly distinct quantum systems, is a curious property that has been known for at least three quarters of a century. In the past two decades it has played a central role in mapping out the structure of…
String theory, as a theory containing quantum gravity, is usually thought to require more dimensions of spacetime than the usual 3+1. Here I argue on physical grounds that needing extra dimensions for strings may well be an artefact of…
We propose a simple geometric interpretation for gauge/gravity duality that relates the large-$N$ limit of gauge theory to the second quantization of string theory.
A brief review of the status of duality symmetries in string theory is presented. The evidence is accumulating rapidly that an enormous group of duality symmetries, including perturbative T dualities and non-perturbative S-dualities,…
The second string revolution, which begin around 1995, has led to a drastic alteration in our perception of the universe, perhaps even more so then did the first string revolution of 1984. That is, extending 10-dimensional string theory to…
String theory can (in principle) describe gravity at all curvature scales, and can be applied to cosmology to look back in time beyond the Planck epoch. The duality symmetries of string theory suggest a cosmological picture in which the…
This Ph.D. thesis collects results obtained investigating two different aspects of modern unifying theories. In the first part I summarized results achieved investigating simplicial aspects of string dualities. Exploiting Boundary Conformal…
The string model of gravitational force is proposed where the string forms the mediation of the gravitational interaction between two gravitating bodies. It reproduces the Newtonian results in the first-order approximation and it predicts…
Currently, string theory represents the only advanced approach to a unification of all interactions, including gravity. In spite of the more than thirty years of its existence it did not make any empirically testable predictions. And it is…
A brief historical synopsis of the connection between gauge theories and string theory is given. Meson configurations known as k-strings are examined from string theory via the gauge/gravity correspondence. Backgrounds dual to k-strings in…
I sketch the main lines of development of the research in quantum gravity, from the first explorations in the early thirties to nowadays.
The well known N=2 string theory describes self-dual gravity, as was shown by Ooguri and Vafa sometime ago. In search of a variant of this theory which would describe self-dual supergravity in 2+2 dimensions, we have constructed two new N=2…
In discussing the construction of a consistent theory of quantum gravity unified with the gauge interactions we are naturally led to a string theory. We review its properties and the five consistent supersymmetric string theories in ten…
A review article on string tension concept and their relevance as non-perturbative quantity on the study of quark confinement in lattice gauge theories. A detailed description of a variety of methods to measure the string tension on the…
Duality symmetries in supergravity theories, together with their implications for string theory, are reviewed.
In addition to being a prime candidate for a fundamental unified theory of all interactions in nature, string theory provides a natural setting to understand gauge field theories. This is linked to the concept of "D-branes": extended,…
In the 1960's, Mandelstam proposed a new approach to gauge theories and gravity based on loops. The program for gauge theories was completed for Yang--Mills theories by Gambini and Trias in the 1980's. Gauge theories could be understood as…
The aim of these notes is to give recent developments in string theory. In particular, we discuss the string spectrums, compactifications, brane physics and dualities.