Related papers: String Theory: The Early Years

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…

We briefly cover the early history of supersymmetry, describe the relation of SUSY quantum field theories to superstring theories and explain why they are considered a likely tool to describe the phenomenology of high energy particle theory…

Cosmic strings, a hot subject in the 1980's and early 1990's, lost its appeal when it was found that it leads to inconsistencies in the power spectrum of the measured cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies. However,…

Recent developments in string theory have important implications for cosmology. Topics discussed here are inflation, the cosmological constant, smoothing of cosmological singularities, and dark matter from parallel universes. Talk presented…

I review some of the recent progress in two-dimensional string theory, which is formulated as a sum over surfaces embedded in one dimension.

We try to draw lessons for higher dimensions from the string representations recently derived for large $N$ Yang-Mills theory by Gross and Taylor, Kostov, and others, and call attention to three characteristics that should be expected of a…

We argue that string theory should have a formulation for which stability and causality are evident. Rather than regard strings as fundamental objects, we suggest they should be regarded as composite systems of more fundamental point-like…

There are two main reasons for the recent renewal of interest in cosmic strings: Fundamental string-theory models suggest their existence; and there are at least two tentative observations of their possible effects. In this talk, I review…

We give an overview of the status of string cosmology. We explain the motivation for the subject, outline the main problems, and assess some of the proposed solutions. Our focus is on those aspects of cosmology that benefit from the…

Supersymmetry remains compelling theory over 30 years in spite of lack of its discovery. It could be already near the corner our days, therefore present and upcoming experiments are crucial for constraining or even discovery of the…

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…

String field theory is supposed to stand to perturbative string theory as quantum field theory stands to single-particle quantum theory; as such, it purports to offer a substantially more general and powerful perspective on string theory…

I briefly discuss the accomplishments of string theory that would survive a complete falsification of the theory as a model of nature and argue the possibility that such a survival may necessarily mean that string theory would become its…

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…

A conjecture formulated by Henri Poincare in 1912 suggests that Max Planck's elementary quantum of action constitutes an authentic "atom of motion". When the conjecture is implemented, the resulting entity, the xon, becomes "the string…

Julian Schwinger began the construction of Source Theory in 1966 in response to the then apparent failure of quantum field theory to describe strong interactions, the physical remoteness of renormalization, and the utility of effective…

Cosmic (super)strings offer promising ways to test ideas about the early universe and physics at high energies. While in field theory constructions their tension is usually assumed to be constant (or at most slowly-varying), this is often…

Twistor string models have been known for more than a decade now but have come back under the spotlight recently with the advent of the scattering equation formalism which has greatly generalized the scope of these models. A striking…

Superstring theory involves a single unifying superstring current for bosons and fermions that in the low-energy limit generalizes the Klein-Gordon (not the Dirac) current. By adopting a relativistic-covariant probabilistic interpretation…

One of the major developments of twentieth century physics has been the gradual recognition that a common feature of the known fundamental interactions is their gauge structure. In this article the authors review the early history of gauge…