Related papers: TASI Lectures: Cosmology for String Theorists

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…

Currently, string theory represents the only advanced approach to a unification of all interactions, including gravity. In spite of the more than thirty years of its existence it did not make any empirically testable predictions. And it is…

This is an introduction to the properties of D-branes, topological defects in string theory on which string endpoints can live. D-branes provide a simple description of various nonperturbative objects required by string duality, and give…

Emphasis is on 2d target space (c=1 coupled to gravity). Contents: 0. Introduction, Overview, and Purpose 1. Loops and States in Conformal Field Theory 2. 2D Euclidean Quantum Gravity I: Path Integral Approach 3. Brief Review of the…

After recalling a few basic concepts from cosmology and string theory, I will discuss the main ideas/assumptions underlying string cosmology and show how these lead to a two-parameter family of ``minimal" models. I will then explain how to…

These lectures aim to provide a global picture of the spaces of consistent quantum supergravity theories and string vacua in higher dimensions. The lectures focus on theories in the even dimensions 10, 8, and 6. Supersymmetry, along with…

This document is an elementary introduction to string diagrams. It takes a computer science perspective: rather than using category theory as a starting point, we build on intuitions from formal language theory, treating string diagrams as…

With the advent of the LHC and the continuing influx of cosmological data, phenomenological aspects of string theory have received renewed attention in recent years and many problems have been properly incorporated in this framework. In…

Most current cosmological models of the very early universe are based on local point particle effective field theories coupled to gravity. I will discuss some conceptual limitations of this approach and argue that an improved description of…

In these lectures we present a few topics in Quantum Field Theory in detail. Some of them are conceptual and some more practical. They have been selected because they appear frequently in current applications to Particle Physics and String…

We present investigations of lens phenomenological properties of cosmic strings for deep galaxy surveys. General results that have obtained for lineic energy distribution are presented first. We stress that generically the local convergence…

This book provides an introduction to string field theory (SFT). String theory is usually formulated in the worldsheet formalism, which describes a single string (first-quantization). While this approach is intuitive and could be pushed far…

This article provides some historical background and then reviews developments in string theory over the last twenty-five years or so. Both perturbative and non-perturbative approaches to string theory are surveyed and their impact on how…

This lecture surveys a few loosely related topics, ranging from the scarcity of quantum field theories -- and the role that this has played, and still plays, in physics -- to paradoxes involving black holes in soluble two dimensional string…

Introductory lectures notes on cosmology, aimed at master students in physics and based on a course held at Milano University (in Italian).

This contribution, aimed mostly at experimental particle physicists, reviews some of the main ideas and results of String Theory in a non-technical language. It originates from the talks presented by the authors at the Electro-Weak session…

We comment on the relation between string theory and empirical science, grounding our discussion in cosmology, a subject with increasingly precise data in which this connection operates at several levels. It is important to take into…

The cosmic string theory for cosmological fluctuations is a good example of healthy scientific progress in cosmology. It is a well defined physically motivated model that has been tested by cosmological observations and has been ruled out…

This is a short summary of my lectures given at the Fourth Mexican School on Gravitation and Mathematical Physics. These lectures gave a brief introduction to black holes in string theory, in which I primarily focussed on describing some of…

Some of the phenomenological implications of string cosmological models are reviewed, with particular attention to the spectra of the tensor, scalar and vector modes of the geometry. A class of self-dual string cosmological models is…