Related papers: String Duality--A Colloquium
The loop representation of quantum gravity has many formal resemblances to a background-free string theory. In fact, its origins lie in attempts to treat the string theory of hadrons as an approximation to QCD, in which the strings…
We investigate the asymptotic Tower Weak Gravity Conjecture in weak coupling limits of open string theories with minimal supersymmetry in four dimensions, focusing for definiteness on gauge theories realized on 7-branes in F-theory.…
We argue that complex systems science and the rules of quantum physics are intricately related. We discuss a range of quantum phenomena, such as cryptography, computation and quantum phases, and the rules responsible for their complexity.…
In the strong coupling limit type IIA superstring theory develops an eleventh dimension that is not apparent in perturbation theory. This suggests the existence of a consistent 11d quantum theory, called M theory, which is approximated by…
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…
String theory avoids the ultraviolet infinities that arise in trying to quantize gravity. It is also more predictive than conventional quantum field theory, one aspect of this being the way that it contributed to the emergence of the…
The past year has seen enormous progress in string theory. It has become clear that all of the different string theories are different limits of a single theory. Moreover, in certain limits, one obtains a new, eleven-dimensional structure…
String theory has been the dominating research field in theoretical physics during the last decades. Despite the considerable time elapse, no new testable predictions have been derived by string theorists and it is understandable that…
Two popular attempts to understand the quantum physics of gravitation are critically assessed. The talk on which this paper is based was intended for a general particle-physics audience.
We use analytic continuation to extend the gauge/gravity duality nonperturbative description of the strong force coupling into the transition, near-perturbative, regime where perturbative effects become important. By excluding the…
The goal of this article is to present a broad perspective on quantum gravity for \emph{non-experts}. After a historical introduction, key physical problems of quantum gravity are illustrated. While there are a number of interesting and…
Three subjects are considered here: a self-dual non-critical string that appears in Type IIB superstring theory at points in ${\rm K3}$ moduli space where the Type IIA theory has extended gauge symmetry; a conformal field theory singularity…
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…
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 recent concept in theoretical physics, motivated in string duality and M-theory, is the notion that not all quantum theories arise from quantising a classical system. Also, a given quantum model may possess more than just one classical…
A general prediction of string unification is the existence of exotic states with fractional charges under the free unbroken Abelian generators of the underlying GUT symmetry. Such states may be long-lived due to the existence of weakly…
We note that the non-perturbative quantisation of supergravity as recently investigated using loop quantum gravity techniques provides an opportunity to probe an interesting sector of the AdS/CFT correspondence, which is usually not…
We use recently obtained 2-loop string coupling constants to analyze a class of string models based on orbifold compactification. Assuming weak coupling at the string scale and single-scale unification leads to restrictions on the spectrum…
We construct the strong-coupling series in 4d simplicial quantum gravity up to volume 38. It is used to calculate estimates for the string susceptibility exponent gamma for various modifications of the theory. It provides a very efficient…
We combine old and new quantum field theoretic arguments to show that any theory of stable or metastable higher spin particles can be coupled to gravity only when the gravity sector has a stringy structure. Metastable higher spin particles,…