Related papers: String Duality--A Colloquium
The strong coupling dynamics of string theories in dimension $d\geq 4$ are studied. It is argued, among other things, that eleven-dimensional supergravity arises as a low energy limit of the ten-dimensional Type IIA superstring, and that a…
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…
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,…
Recent developments involving strongly coupled superstrings are discussed from a phenomenological point of view. In particular, strongly coupled $E_8\times E'_8$ is described as an appropriate long-wavelength limit of M-theory, and some…
This is the written version of a short talk given at the University of Leipzig in December 1998. It reviews some general aspects of string theory from the viewpoint of the search for an unifying theory. Here, special emphasis lies on the…
In these notes, based on a talk given at the Rencontres de Moriond, I give a simple introduction to the tremendous progress that has been made during the last few years towards the understanding of strong-coupling phenomena in quantum gauge…
String theory has been initially derived from motivations coming from strong interaction phenomenology,but its application faced deep conceptual and practical difficulties. The strong interactions found their theoretical foundation…
We argue that the light particles in string theory obey an effective quantum mechanics modified by the inclusion of a quantum-gravitational friction term, induced by unavoidable couplings to unobserved massive string states in the…
I discuss the early developments of string theory with respect to its connection with gauge theory and general relativity from my own perspective. The period covered is mainly from 1969 to 1974, during which I became involved in research on…
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…
This is the text of a talk given at the Inaugural Conference of the Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics, Seoul, Korea, June 9, 1996. If nature is described by string theory, and if the compactification radius is large (as suggested…
The Weak Gravity Conjecture holds that in a theory of quantum gravity, any gauge force must mediate interactions stronger than gravity for some particles. This statement has surprisingly deep and extensive connections to many different…
String theory, as a theory containing quantum gravity, is usually thought to require more dimensions of spacetime than the usual 3+1. Here I argue on physical grounds that needing extra dimensions for strings may well be an artefact of…
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…
A large number of particle species allows to formulate quantum gravity in a special double-scaling limit, the species limit. In this regime, quantum gravitational amplitudes simplify substantially. An infinite set of perturbative…
Recent developments in string duality suggest that the string scale may not be irrevocably tied to the Planck scale. Two explicit but unrealistic examples are described where the ratio of the string scale to the Planck scale is arbitrarily…
Superstring theory, and a recent extension called M theory, are leading candidates for a quantum theory that unifies gravity with the other forces. As such, they are certainly not ordinary quantum field theories. However, recent duality…
We propose a simple geometric interpretation for gauge/gravity duality that relates the large-$N$ limit of gauge theory to the second quantization of string theory.
We offer an interpretation of super-quantum correlations in terms of a "doubly" quantum theory. We argue that string theory, viewed as a quantum theory with two deformation parameters, the string tension \alpha' and the string coupling…
A string-theoretic structure of the standard model is defined having a 4-D quantum gravity metric consistent with topological and algebraic first principles. Unique topological diagrams of string states, strong and weak interactions and…