Related papers: String theory: big problem for small size
This essay presents a critical evaluation of the concepts of string theory and its impact on particle physics. The point of departure is a historical review of four decades of ST within the broader context of six decades of failed attempts…
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,…
String theory builds on the great legacy of Yukawa and Tomonaga: New degrees of freedom and control of the UV are two important themes. This talk will give an overview of some of the progress and some of the unsolved problems that…
This essay presents a critical evaluation of the concepts of string theory and its impact on particle physics. The point of departure is a historical review of four decades of string theory within the broader context of six decades of…
Using a classical action associated to a point-particle in (1+1)-dimensions the classical string theory is derived. In connection with this result two aspects are clarified: First, the point particle in (1+1)-dimensions is not an ordinary…
The past year has seen enormous progress in string theory. It has become clear that all of the different string theories are different limits of a single theory. Moreover, in certain limits, one obtains a new, eleven-dimensional structure…
The cosmological constant problem is turned around to argue for a new foundational physics postulate underlying a consistent quantum theory of gravity and matter, such as string theory. This postulate is a quantum equivalence principle…
String theory avoids the ultraviolet infinities that arise in trying to quantize gravity. It is also more predictive than conventional quantum field theory, one aspect of this being the way that it contributed to the emergence of the…
It has been shown that there is a sequential embedding structure in a $w_N$\ string theory based on a linearized $W_N$\ algebra. The $w_N$\ string theory is obtained as a special realization of the $w_{N+1}$\ string. The $w_{\infty}$\…
Following Dyson's analogy between the quantum field theory and the 19th-century chemistry-both explain how but not why-one could also establish an analogy between atomic physics and string theory. Atomic physics was needed to answer the…
This lecture presents a brief overview of the early history of string theory and supersymmetry. It describes how the S-matrix theory program for understanding the strong nuclear force evolved into superstring theory, which is a promising…
This is a short account, based on a talk given at the 2024 Moriond Cosmology Conference, of where and why string theory matters in early universe cosmology. It is written for a cosmology audience predisposed to be at best sceptical, and at…
There are at present two known string theories in $(2,2)$ dimensions. One of them is the well known $N=2$ string, and the other one is a more recently constructed $N=1$ spacetime supersymmetric string. They are both based on certain…
String theory is the most promising candidate for the theory unifying all interactions including gravity. It has an extremely difficult dynamics. Therefore, it is useful to study some its simplifications. One of them is non-critical string…
We consider some questions of naturalness which arise when one considers conventional field theories in the presence of gravitation: the problem of global symmetries, the strong CP problem, and the cosmological constant problem. Using…
These are the lecture notes of the introductory String Theory course held by one of the authors for the master program of Theoretical Physics at Turin University. The world-sheet approach to String Theory is pedagogically introduced in the…
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…
There is evidence that string theory possesses a large discretuum of stable and/or metastable ground states, with zero or four supersymmetries in four dimensions. I discuss critically the nature of this evidence. Assuming this "landscape"…
The strong coupling limit of a quantum system is in general quite complicated, but in some cases a great simplification occurs: the strongly coupled limit is equivalent to the weakly coupled limit of some other system. In string theory…
In these lectures we give a brief introduction to perturbative and non-perturbative string theory. The outline is the following: 1. Introduction to perturbative string theory 1.1 From point particle to extended objects 1.2 Free closed and…