Related papers: David Olive: his life and work
Double Field Theory (DFT) has emerged as a comprehensive framework for gravity, presenting a testable and robust alternative to General Relativity (GR), rooted in the $\mathbf{O}(D,D)$ symmetry principle of string theory. These lecture…
This is an expanded and updated version of a talk given at the Conference on Topics in Geometry and Physics at the University of Southern California, November 6, 1992. It is a survey talk, aimed at mathematicians AND physicists, which…
Input from QCD and string theory is used in order to elucidate basic features of the string theory dual of QCD, It is argued that the relevant string theory is a five-dimensional version of the type-0 superstring. The vacuum solution is…
We extend the recently constructed double field theory formulation of the low-energy theory of the closed bosonic string to the heterotic string. The action can be written in terms of a generalized metric that is a covariant tensor under…
String theory is the leading contemporary framework to explore the synthesis of quantum mechanics with gravity. String phenomenology aims to study string theory while maintaining contact with observational data. The fermionic $Z_2\times…
The (bosonic) Virasoro minimal string, which relates worldsheet string theory to a deformation of the JT gravity matrix model, provides an interesting example of a tractable matrix/string duality. We explore its $\mathcal{N} =1$…
We study the interaction of two D-particles in the space-time of the shock wave. We first write the amplitude in string theory and find that, at large distances from the shock-wave source, the O(v^4) term in the relative velocity v is an…
We analyze the one-loop effects of massive fields on 2-to-2 scattering processes involving gravitons. It has been suggested that in the presence of gravity, any local effective field theory description must break down at the "species…
We explore gauge fields - strings duality by means of the loop equations and the zigzag symmetry. The results are striking and incomplete. Striking - because we find that the string ansatz proposed in [A.M. Polyakov, hep-th/9711002]…
We consider compactifications of the matrix model of M-theory on $S^1/Z_2\times T^d$ for $d>0$, and interpret them as orbifolds of the supersymmetric U(N) Yang-Mills theory on $R\times T^{d+1}$. The orbifold group acts both on the gauge…
Gauge/gravity duality is the conjecture that string theories have dual descriptions as gauge theories. Weakly-coupled gravity is dual to strongly-coupled gauge theories, ideal for lattice calculations. I will show precision lattice…
Reminiscences of my intellectual and personal interactions with Professor Nambu, and discussion of his contributions to string theory. Switching to my own research, by expressing the string coordinates as bispinors, I suggest a kinematical…
In recent work Kachru, Kumar and Silverstein introduced a special class of non-supersymmetric type II string theories in which the cosmological constant vanishes at the first two orders of perturbation theory. Heuristic arguments suggest…
This article is devoted to an overview of superstring perturbation theory from the point of view of super Riemann surfaces. We aim to elucidate some of the subtleties of superstring perturbation that caused difficulty in the early…
Over fourty years ago, the physicist Polyakov proposed a bold framework for string theory, in which the problem was reduced to the study of certain "random surfaces". He further made the tantalising suggestion that this theory could be…
We demonstrate how duality invariance of the low energy expansion of the four-graviton amplitude in type II string theory determines the precise coefficients of multiloop logarithmic ultraviolet divergences of maximal supergravity in…
This thesis presents a thorough analysis of the links between the N=4 supersymmetric gauge theory in four dimensions and its three topological twisted counterparts. Special emphasis is put in deriving explicit results in terms of the vacuum…
We study the origins of the five ten-dimensional ``matrix superstring'' theories, supplementing old results with new ones, and find that they all fit into a unified framework. In all cases the matrix definition of the string in the limit of…
This talk begins with some history and basic facts about string theory and its connections with strong interactions. Comparisons of stacks of Dirichlet branes with curved backgrounds produced by them are used to motivate the AdS/CFT…
We introduce the complex Liouville string, a solvable string theory defined by coupling two Liouville theories with complex conjugate central charges $c \in 13+i \mathbb{R}$ on the worldsheet. We compute its amplitudes from first principles…