Related papers: Recent Developments in Superstring Theory
This is an invited contribution to the Special Issue of "Foundations of Physics" titled "Forty Years Of String Theory: Reflecting On the Foundations". I have been asked to assess string theory as an outsider, and to compare it with the…
I review recent progress on the connection between string theory and quantum chromodynamics in the context of the gauge/gravity duality. Emphasis is placed on conciseness and conceptual aspects rather than on technical details. Topics…
These notes are devoted to the intriguing and still largely unexplored links between String Theory and Higher Spins, the types of excitations that lie behind its most cherished properties. A closer look at higher-spin fields provides some…
Ever since its birth, up until its present development, the major role of string theory involves being the best candidate for the theory of quantum gravity and other species of interactions. In the present work, we would like to accomplish…
Recent work has made clear that we have far more control over the dynamics of supersymmetric than non-supersymmetric theories. Here, I discuss some issues in dynamical supersymmetry breaking both in ordinary field theory and in string…
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…
One cannot yet point to any firm string prediction. While many approximate string ground states are known with interesting properties, we do not have any argument that one or another describes what we observe around us, and for reasons…
An overview of string theory in the maximally supersymmetric plane-wave background is given, and some supersymmetric D-branes are discussed.
We provide a qualitative review of flux compactifications of string theory, focusing on broad physical implications and statistical methods of analysis.
We briefly review some modern developments in higher spin field theory and their links with superstring theory. The analysis is based on various BRST constructions allowing to derive the Lagrangians for massive and massless higher spin…
We describe some recent progress in understanding and formulating string theory which is based on extensive studies of strings in lower (D=2) dimension. At the center is a large $W_{\infty}$ symmetry that appears most simply in the matrix…
This is a brief description of what has been accomplished and what remains to be done in the construction of a nonperturbative formulation of "The Theory Formerly Known as String". It is culled from two short talks given by the author at…
Following hep-th/0309238 relating the matrix string theory to the light-cone superstring field theory, we write down two supercharges in the matrix string theory explicitly. After checking the supersymmetry algebra at the leading order, we…
We review recent developments concerning supersymmetric black holes in string theory. After a general introduction to the laws of black hole mechanics and to black hole entropy in string theory, we discuss black hole solutions in N=2…
We study the formation and evolution of an interconnected string network in large-scale field-theory numerical simulations, both in flat spacetime and in expanding universe. The network consists of gauge U(1) strings of two different kinds…
Expanded lecture notes. Preliminary version, comments are welcome.
This is a brief review of the current state of knowledge on "little string theories", which are non-gravitational theories having several string-like properties. We focus on the six dimensional maximally supersymmetric "little string…
An overview of the recent developments in plurifine potential theory.
Much of the recent progress in String Theory can be traced to a precise strategy: a careful study of the few models known since the beginnings of the subject, and the abstraction from them of basic properties that one would like to demand…
An overview is given of the formulation of low-energy string cosmologies together with examples of particular solutions, successes and problems of the theory.