Related papers: What is String Theory?
We review the status of duality symmetries in superstring theories. These discrete symmetries mark the striking differences between theories of pointlike objects and theories of extended objects. They prove to be very helpful in…
I review the physical properties of different vacua in the background independent open string field theory. Talk presented at Strings 2001, Mumbai, India, http://theory.theory.tifr.res.in/strings/Proceedings/#sha-s.
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…
In these lectures I discuss various unsolved problems of string theory and their relations to quantum gravity, 3d Ising model, large N QCD, and quantum cosmology. No solutions are presented but some new and perhaps useful approaches are…
A very brief review is given of some of the developments leading to our current understanding of black holes in string theory. This is followed by a discussion of two possible misconceptions in this subject - one involving the stability of…
String theory is the most promising candidate for the theory unifying all interactions including gravity. It has an extremely difficult dynamics. Therefore, it is useful to study some its simplifications. One of them is non-critical string…
In this article we examine the compatibility of some recent results, results relating M-Theory to String Theory, with the string-string duality conjecture in six-dimensions. In particular, we rederive the relation between M-Theory and Type…
This article surveys some of the highlights in the development of string theory through the first superstring revolution in 1984. The emphasis is on topics in which the author was involved, especially the observation that critical string…
An overview is given of the way in which the unification program of particle physics has evolved into the proposal of superstring theory as a prime candidate for unifying quantum gravity with the other forces and particles of nature. A key…
String Theory is the result of the conjunction of three conceptually independent elements: (i) the metaphysical idea of a nomological unity of the forces, (ii) the model-theoretical paradigm of Quantum Field Theory, and (iii) the conflict…
In this talk I review recent developments in superstring theory. In the first half of the talk I discuss some of the earlier developments in this subject. This includes a review of the status of string theory as a unified theory of gravity…
The goal of these lectures is to present an informal but precise introduction to a body of concepts and methods of interest in number theory and string theory revolving around modular forms and their generalizations. Modular invariance lies…
It is hoped that these lectures will give a point of entry into that vast web of related ideas that go under the name "string theory". I start with a more or less qualitative introduction to gravity as a field theory and sketch how one…
We review some recent developments in the theory of $W_\infty$. We comment on its relevance to lower-dimensional string theory.
The physical motivations and the basic construction rules for Type I strings and M-theory compactifications are reviewed in light of the recent developments. The first part contains the basic theoretical ingredients needed for building…
This is a brief introduction to the subject of Conformal Field Theory on surfaces with boundaries and crosscaps, which describes the perturbative expansion of open string theory.
Duality, the equivalence between seemingly distinct quantum systems, is a curious property that has been known for at least three quarters of a century. In the past two decades it has played a central role in mapping out the structure of…
One cannot yet point to any firm string prediction. While many approximate string ground states are known with interesting properties, we do not have any argument that one or another describes what we observe around us, and for reasons…
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…
These lectures present a general critical assessment of various frameworks for quantum gravity, with particular emphasis on string theory. The topics discussed cover field-theoretical approaches to quantum gravity, anomalies, bosonic and…