Related papers: W-Strings 93
The phenomenological aspects of string theory are briefly reviewed. Emphasis is given to the status of 4D string model building, effective Lagrangians, model independent results, supersymmetry breaking and duality symmetries.
Some old and new evidence for the existence of the string (planar random surfaces) representation of multicolour QCD are reviewed. They concern the random surface representation of the strong coupling expansion in lattice multicolour gauge…
We investigate properties of several string networks in $D < 10$ which carry electric currents as well as electrostatic charge densities. We show the electric-current conservations as well as the force-balance condition of the string…
In these lectures I review recent attempts to apply string theory to cosmology, including string cosmology and various models of brane cosmology. In addition, the review includes an introduction to inflation as well as a discussion of…
String theory is at the moment the only advanced approach to a unification of all interactions, including gravity. But, in spite of the more than thirty years of its existence, it does not make any empirically testable predictions, and it…
Very recently Berkovits and Vafa have argued that the $N{=}0$ string is a particular choice of background of the $N{=}1$ string. Under the assumption that the physical states of the $N{=}0$ string theory came essentially from the matter…
Recent developments in superstring phenomenology are summarized on a non-technical level. (Talk presented at the XXVIIth Rencontre de Moriond on Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories.)
There is evidence that string theory possesses a large discretuum of stable and/or metastable ground states, with zero or four supersymmetries in four dimensions. I discuss critically the nature of this evidence. Assuming this "landscape"…
These lecture notes review the topological string theory and its applications to mathematics and physics. They expand on material presented at the Takagi Lectures of the Mathematical Society of Japan on 21 June 2008 at Department of…
We study the spectrum of $W_3$ strings. In particular, we show that for appropriately chosen space-time signature, one of the scalar fields is singled out by the spin-3 constraint and is ``frozen'': no creation operators from it can appear…
Recent developments in string theory have important implications for cosmology. Topics discussed here are inflation, the cosmological constant, smoothing of cosmological singularities, and dark matter from parallel universes. Talk presented…
What follows is a broad-brush overview of the recent synergistic interactions between mathematics and theoretical physics of quantum field theory and string theory. The discussion is forward-looking, suggesting potentially useful and…
We give an introduction to the physics and mathematics involved in the recently observed relation between topological string theory and knot contact homology and then discuss this relation. The note is based on two lectures given at the…
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,…
We will report on recent advances in the understanding of non-perturbative interconnections between different string dualities. Weak-strong coupling duality (S-duality) and T-duality (symmetry under compactification on dual tori) allows one…
A synthetic report of the advances in the study of classical and quantum string dynamics in curved backgrounds is provided, namely: the new feature of multistring solutions; the effect of a cosmological constant and of spacial curvature on…
We review some of the recent progress in the continuum formulation of two-dimensional string theory, i.e. two-dimensional quantum gravity coupled to $c=1$ matter. Special attention is devoted to the discrete states and to the $w_\infty$…
String theory is accused by some of its critics to be a purely abstract mathematical discipline, having lost the contact to the simple yet deeply rooted questions which physics provided until the beginning of this century. We argue that, in…
We provide an overview of recent work which aims to understand patterns of vanishing Yukawa couplings that arise in models of particle physics derived from string theory. These patterns are seemingly linked to a plethora of different…
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…