Related papers: TASI Lectures on Moonshine
The subject matter of these lecture notes is the open bosonic critical string, its perturbative spectrum and interactions. We begin with a brief review of classical string propagation, quantization, as well as the level-by-level…
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…
These are the lecture notes for a short course in topological string theory that I gave at Uppsala University in the fall of 2004. The notes are aimed at PhD students who have studied quantum field theory and general relativity, and who…
An overview of supersymmetry and its different applications is presented. We motivate supersymmetry in particle physics. We then explain how supersymmetry helps us analyze field theories exactly, and what dynamical lessons these solutions…
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…
Modular and quasimodular forms have played an important role in gravity and string theory. Eisenstein series have appeared systematically in the determination of spectrums and partition functions, in the description of non-perturbative…
This monograph discusses dualities in physics: what dualities are, their main examples--from quantum mechanics and electrodynamics to statistical mechanics, quantum field theory and string theory--and the philosophical questions they raise.…
In these lecture notes from Strings `91, I briefly sketch the analogy between two dimensional black holes and the s-wave sector of four dimensional black holes, and the physical interest of the latter, particularly in the magnetically…
We study worldsheet theory of confining strings in two-dimensional massive adjoint QCD. Similarly to confining strings in higher dimensions this theory exhibits a non-trivial $S$-matrix surviving even in the strict planar limit. In the…
Elements of supergeometry are an ingredient in many contemporary classical and quantum field models involving odd fields. For instance, this is the case of SUSY field theory, BRST theory, supergravity. Addressing to theoreticians, these…
In this note, we first explain the equivalence between the interaction Hamiltonian of Green-Schwarz light-cone gauge superstring field theory and the twist field formalism known from matrix string theory. We analyze the role of the large N…
We study particle theories that have a tower of worldline internal degrees of freedom. Such a theory can arise when the worldsheet of closed strings is dimensionally reduced to a worldline, in which case the tower is infinite with regularly…
This is a pedagogical introduction into theories with branes and extra dimensions. We first discuss the construction of such models from an effective field theory point of view, and then discuss large extra dimensions and some of their…
We consider string theory in a time dependent orbifold with a null singularity. The singularity separates a contracting universe from an expanding universe, thus constituting a big crunch followed by a big bang. We quantize the theory both…
The theory of monstrous moonshine asserts that the coefficients of Hauptmoduln, including the $j$-function, coincide precisely with the graded characters of the monster module, an infinite-dimensional graded representation of the monster…
We present a finite-dimensional and smooth formulation of string structures on spin bundles. It uses trivializations of the Chern-Simons 2-gerbe associated to this bundle. Our formulation is particularly suitable to deal with string…
In these lectures we review how some of the recent developments in string theory are closely related to generic properties of supersymmetry. Lectures given at the Nato Advanced Study Institute on "Strings, Branes and Dualities", Cargese,…
The moduli space of triangles is a two-dimensional space that records triangle shapes in the plane, considered up to similarity. We study the subset corresponding to \textit{lattice triangles}, which are triangles whose vertices have…
The history of the Universe and the forces that shaped it are encoded in maps of the cosmos. From understanding these maps, we gain insights into nature that are inaccessible by other means. Unfortunately, the connection between fundamental…
The duality cascade, and its dual description as string theory on the warped deformed conifold, brings together several sophisticated topics, some of which are not widely known. These lectures, which contain a number of previously…