Related papers: String theory: an update
This is an introduction to some recent developments in string theory and M theory. We try to concentrate on the main physical aspects, and often leave more technical details to the original literature.
The talk contains a brief introduction string theory, followed by a discussion of some of the recent developments.
String theory is the leading candidate for a unified theory of the standard model and gravity. In the last few years theorists have realized that there is a unique structure underlying string theory. In this unification a prominent role is…
The purpose of this short review is to present progresses in string theory in the recent past. There have been very important developments in our understanding of string dynamics, especially in the nonperturbative aspects. In this context,…
The aim of these lectures is to give an introduction to several topics which lie at the intersection of string theory, gravity theory and gravity phenomenology. One successively reviews: (i) the "membrane" approach to the dissipative…
A review is given of recent research on two-dimensional gauge theories, with particular emphasis on the equivalence between these theories and certain string theories with a two-dimensional target space. Some related open problems are…
This is a brief review of the present status, of some recent developments and of the open challenges in string/M theory.
Ideas about a duality between gauge fields and strings have been around for many decades. During the last ten years, these ideas have taken a much more concrete mathematical form. String descriptions of the strongly coupled dynamics of…
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…
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…
After a review of some topics concerning the phenomenological applications of perturbative string theory, I discuss to what extent all of it is affected by the recent developements in string dualities.
This Ph.D. thesis collects results obtained investigating two different aspects of modern unifying theories. In the first part I summarized results achieved investigating simplicial aspects of string dualities. Exploiting Boundary Conformal…
A brief review of the status of duality symmetries in string theory is presented. The evidence is accumulating rapidly that an enormous group of duality symmetries, including perturbative T dualities and non-perturbative S-dualities,…
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…
We discuss different formulations and approaches to string theory and $ 2d$ quantum gravity. The generic idea to get a unique description of {\it many} different string vacua altogether is demonstrated on the examples in $ 2d$ conformal,…
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…
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…
The first part is an introduction to conformal field theory and string perturbation theory. The second part deals with the search for a deeper answer to the question posed in the title. Contents: 1. Conformal Field Theory 2. String Theory…
Much of modern string theory research concerns AdS/CFT duality, or more generally, gauge/gravity duality. The main subjects are a) Testing and understanding such dualities by exploring how they work for systems with a lot of supersymmetry…
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…