Related papers: An Introduction to String Theory
Over the last few years, string theory has changed profoundly. Most importantly, novel duality relations have emerged which involve gauge theories of brane excitations on one side and various closed string backgrounds on the other. In this…
These proceedings are based on lectures delivered at the "RTN Winter School on Strings, Supergravity and Gauge Theories", CERN, January 16 - January 20, 2006. The school was mainly aimed at Ph.D. students and young postdocs. The lectures…
The talk contains a brief introduction string theory, followed by a discussion of some of the recent developments.
This dissertation consists of a comprehensive and pedagogical review of Maldacena's original derivation of the AdS/CFT correspondence and the main topics of string theory necessary to understand it. The large $N$ expansion of Yang-Mills…
This is a pedagogical introduction to the basics of the cosmic string theory and also a review of the recent progress made with respect to the macrophysical predictions of the theory. Topics covered include, string formation and evolution,…
In these lectures I review recent attempts to apply string theory to cosmology, including string cosmology and various models of brane cosmology. In addition, the review includes an introduction to inflation as well as a discussion of…
An overview is given of the way in which the unification program of particle physics has evolved into the proposal of superstring theory as a prime candidate for unifying quantum gravity with the other forces and particles of nature. A key…
These notes provide a brief introduction to modern cosmology, focusing primarily on theoretical issues. Some attention is paid to aspects of potential interest to students of string theory, on both sides of the two-way street of…
This thesis contains of two parts: The first part is a pedagogical introduction into the field of bosonic SFT. After discussing some general properties we expect, Witten's open SFT and Zwiebach's closed SFT are presented in detail. This…
The first part is an introduction to conformal field theory and string perturbation theory. The second part deals with the search for a deeper answer to the question posed in the title. Contents: 1. Conformal Field Theory 2. String Theory…
In these proceedings for the First School on Field Theory and Gravitation (Vit\'oria, Brasil), a brief introduction is given to superstring theory and its duality symmetries. This introduction is intended for beginning graduate students…
This talk considers possible lessons of string theory for low energy physics. These are of two types. First, assuming that string theory is the correct underlying theory of all interactions, we ask whether there are any generic predictions…
This is a pedagogical introduction to D-branes, addressed to graduate students in field theory and particle physics and to other beginners in string theory. I am not going to review the most recent results since there are already many good…
Early string theory described Bosonic particles at the real life Compton scale. Later developments to include Fermions initiated by Ramond and others have lead through Quantum Super Strings to M-theory operating at the as yet experimentally…
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,…
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…
In these lectures I discuss various unsolved problems of string theory and their relations to quantum gravity, 3d Ising model, large N QCD, and quantum cosmology. No solutions are presented but some new and perhaps useful approaches are…
These lectures are devoted to introducing some of the basic features of quantum geometry that have been emerging from compactified string theory over the last couple of years. The developments discussed include new geometric features of…
The first lecture gives a colloquium-level overview of string theory and M-theory. The second lecture surveys various attempts to construct a viable model of particle physics. A recently proposed approach, based on F-theory, is emphasized.
In these two lectures, delivered at the XXXVII Karpacz Winter School, February 2001, I review some applications of superspace in various topics related to string theory and M-theory. The first lecture is mainly devoted to descriptions of…