Related papers: Duality Cascade and Oblique Phases in Non-Commutat…

We investigate N=2 super-Yang-Mills theory on a three sphere in the presence of an isospin chemical potential at strong coupling using the AdS/CFT correspondence. This system exhibits an instability for sufficiently large values of the…

The duality cascade, and its dual description as string theory on the warped deformed conifold, brings together several sophisticated topics, some of which are not widely known. These lectures, which contain a number of previously…

We propose a refinement of the physical picture describing different vacua in bosonic string theory. The vacua with closed strings and open strings are connected by the string field theory version of the Higgs mechanism, generalizing the…

We study the phase diagram of non-Abelian pure gauge theories in the presence of a topological theta term. The dependence of the deconfinement temperature on theta is determined on the lattice both by analytic continuation and by…

We analyze a one-dimensional spin-string model, in which string oscillators are linearly coupled to their two nearest neighbors and to Ising spins representing internal degrees of freedom. String-spin coupling induces a long-range…

We study a ground state of N=1 supersymmetric SU(K+P) x SU(K) cascading gauge theory of Klebanov et.al [1,2] on R x S^3 at zero temperature. A radius of S^3 sets a compactification scale mu. An interplay between mu and the strong coupling…

The deconfining transition in non-Abelian gauge theory is known to occur by a condensation of Wilson lines. By expanding around an appropriate Wilson line background, it is possible at large $N$ to analytically continue the confining phase…

The recently found non-critical open string theories is reviewed. These open strings, noncommutative open string theories (NCOS), arise as consistent quantum theories describing the low energy theory of D-branes in a background electric…

We study the phase diagrams of the bifundamental QCD (QCD(BF)) of different ranks, which is the $4$d $SU(N_1) \times SU(N_2)$ gauge theory coupled with a bifundamental Dirac fermion. After discussing the anomaly constraints on possible…

We analyze the two dimensional type 0 theory with background RR-fluxes. Both the 0A and the 0B theory have two distinct fluxes $q$ and $\tilde q$. We study these two theories at finite temperature (compactified on a Euclidean circle of…

We consider new cosmological solutions with a collapsing, an intermediate and an expanding phase. The boundary between the expanding (collapsing) phase and the intermediate phase is seen by comoving observers as a cosmological past (future)…

In this lecture notes we explain and discuss some ideas concerning noncommutative geometry in general, as well as noncommutative field theories and string field theories. We consider noncommutative quantum field theories emphasizing an…

We report the structure of transient fluctuations in the liquid phase of a two-dimensional system that exhibits several ordered phases with different symmetries. The density-temperature phase diagram of the system studied, composed of…

We propose a worldsheet description for the ${\rm AdS}_5\times {\rm S}^5$ string theory dual to large $N$, free ${\cal N}=4$ super Yang-Mills in four dimensions. The worldsheet theory is a natural generalisation of the recently investigated…

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 argue that the deconfinement transition of large-N Yang-Mills theory is the condensation of very long and self-intersecting chromo-electric flux strings (QCD string), which is analogous to the formation of a black hole in string theory.…

The phase diagram of QCD at finite temperature and density is discussed. Large numbers of quark colors, $N_{\rm c} >> 1$, is used to explain generic features of the phase diagram. For temperatures below $ T \le 160$~MeV at zero baryon…

I explain two applications of the relationship between four dimensional N=1 supersymmetric gauge theories, zero dimensional gauged matrix models, and geometric transitions in string theory. The first is related to the spectrum of BPS domain…

We discuss heterotic string theories in two dimensions with gauge groups Spin(24) and Spin(8) x E_8. After compactification the theories exhibit a rich spectrum of states with both winding and momentum. At special points some of these…

We study the zero-temperature phase transitions of two-dimensional superconducting arrays with both the self- and the junction capacitances in the presence of external magnetic fields. We consider two kinds of excitations from the Mott…