Related papers: Does Superstring Theory Have a Conformally Invaria…
In this talk I will survey some of the basic facts about superstring theories in 10 dimensions and the dualities that relate them to M theory in 11 dimensions. Then I will mention some important unresolved issues.
This talk is divided into two parts. The first part reviews some of the duality relationships between superstring theories. These relationships are interpreted as providing evidence for the existence of a unique underlying fundamental…
We briefly review superstring theories, highlighting the important concepts, developments, and open problems of the subject.
The talk contains a brief introduction string theory, followed by a discussion of some of the recent developments.
We investigate strings theories as defined from four dimensional gauge theories. It is argued that novel (super)string theories exist up to 26 dimensions. Some of them may support weakly curved geometries.
We suggest supersymmetric extension of conformally invariant string theory which is exclusively based on extrinsic curvature action. At the classical level this is a tension-less string theory. The absence of conformal anomaly in quantum…
In the strong coupling limit type IIA superstring theory develops an eleventh dimension that is not apparent in perturbation theory. This suggests the existence of a consistent 11d quantum theory, called M theory, which is approximated by…
In these lecture notes, an introduction to superstring theory is presented. Classical strings, covariant and light-cone quantization, supersymmetric strings, anomaly cancelation, compactification, T-duality, supersymmetry breaking, and…
This thesis consists of an introductory text, which is divided into two parts, and six appended research papers. The first part contains a general discussion on conformal and superconformal symmetry in six dimensions, and treats how the…
Perturbative superstring theory is revisited, with the goal of giving a simpler and more direct demonstration that multi-loop amplitudes are gauge-invariant (apart from known anomalies), satisfy space-time supersymmetry when expected, and…
There have been many remarkable developments in our understanding of superstring theory in the past few years, a period that has been described as ``the second superstring revolution.'' Several of them are discussed here. The presentation…
A free superstring with chiral N=2 supersymmetry in six dimensions is proposed. It couples to a two-form gauge field with a self-dual field strength. Compactification to four dimensions on a two-torus gives a strongly coupled N=4…
We construct a hierarchy of supersymmetric string theories by showing that the general N-extended superstrings may be viewed as a special class of the (N+1)-extended superstrings. As a side result, we find a twisted (N+2) superconformal…
We construct new superstring actions which are distinguished from standard superstrings by being space-time scale invariant. Like standard superstrings, they are also reparametrization invariant, space-time supersymmetric, and invariant…
The strong coupling dynamics of string theories in dimension $d\geq 4$ are studied. It is argued, among other things, that eleven-dimensional supergravity arises as a low energy limit of the ten-dimensional Type IIA superstring, and that a…
We consider a conformal system of a string and a particle defined in D=10+2 space-time dimensions. The extra time-like dimension is a gauge artifact and can be eliminated by choosing a gauge in which the SO(10,1) Lorentz symmetry is…
Given a conserved and traceless energy-momentum tensor and a conformal Killing vector, one obtains a conserved current. We generalise this construction to superconformal theories in three, four, five and six dimensions with various amounts…
Fractional superstrings are recently-proposed generalizations of the traditional superstrings and heterotic strings. They have critical spacetime dimensions which are less than ten, and in this paper we investigate model-building for the…
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…
These four lectures, addressed to an audience of graduate students in experimental high energy physics, survey some of the basic concepts in string theory. The purpose is to convey a general sense of what string theory is and what it has…