Related papers: Manifest Duality in Low-Energy Superstrings
During the last ten years, intriguing dualities between gauge and string theory have been found and explored. They provide a novel window on strongly coupled gauge physics, including QCD-like models. Based on a short historical review of…
String theories should reduce to ordinary four-dimensional field theories at low energies. Yet the formulation of the two are so different that such a connection, if it exists, is not immediately obvious. With the Schwinger proper-time…
This presentation is intended to give a flavour of the physics to be studied and discovered by exploiting the interface between string theory, M-theory and field theory provided by the dynamics of extended objects called `branes', and their…
We inspect the excitation energy spectrum of a confining string in terms of solitons in an effective field theory model. The spectrum can be characterized by a spectral function, and twisting and bending of the string is manifested by the…
The heterotic string theory, compactified to four dimensions, has been conjectured to have a duality symmetry (S duality) that transforms the dilaton nonlinearly. If valid, this symmetry could provide an important means of obtaining…
String theory and supersymmetry are theoretical ideas that go beyond the standard model of particle physics and show promise for unifying all forces. After a brief introduction to supersymmetry, we discuss the prospects for its experimental…
I discuss some current thoughts on how low-energy measurements and consistency constrain theories at high energies with emphasis on string theory. I also discuss some recent work on the dynamics of supersymmetric gauge theories.
We study the low energy behaviour of N=(2,2) supersymmetric gauge theories in 1+1 dimensions, with orthogonal and symplectic gauge groups and matters in the fundamental representation. We observe supersymmetry breaking in super-Yang-Mills…
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…
Matrix string theory (or more generally U-Duality) requires Super Yang-Mills theory to reflect a stringy degeneracy of BPS short multiplets. These are found as supersymmetric states in the Yang-Mills carrying (fractionated) momentum, or in…
I describe our understanding of physics near the planck length, in particular the great progress of the last four years in string theory. Superstring theory, and a recent extension called M theory, are leading candidates for a quantum…
In this lecture we address the following issues in the context of string theories: i) The role played by S and T dualities in obtaining topological inflation in N=1 supergravity models, ii) A mechanism to generate the baryon asymmetry of…
It is known for ten years that self-dual Yang-Mills theory is the effective field theory of the open N=2 string in 2+2 dimensional spacetime. We uncover an infinite set of abelian rigid string symmetries, corresponding to the symmetries and…
These lectures give an introduction to the novel duality relating type IIB string theory in a maximally supersymmetric plane-wave background to N=4, d=4, U(N) Super Yang-Mills theory in a particular large N and large R-charge limit due to…
We extend spacetime duality to superspace, including fermions in the low-energy limits of superstrings. The tangent space is a curved, extended superspace. The geometry is based on an enlarged coordinate space where the vanishing of the…
The duality map between gauge theories and strings suggests that when the gauge theory is in the weak coupling regime the dual string tension effectively tends to zero, $\alpha' \to \infty$. This observation of Sundborg and Witten initiates…
Versions of M-theory are found in spacetime signatures (9,2) and (6,5), in addition to the usual M-theory in 10+1 dimensions, and these give rise to type IIA string theories in 10-dimensional spacetime signatures (10,0),(9,1),(8,2),(6,4)…
This is a general introduction to duality in field theories. The existence and breaking of global symmetries is used as a guideline to systematically prove duality between different field theories. Systems discussed include abelian and…
By considering N=2 string amplitudes we determine the (2+2)-dimensional target space action for the physical degrees of freedom: self-dual gravity and self-dual Yang-Mills, together with their respective infinite towers of higher-spin…
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…