Related papers: Les Houches Lectures on Fields, Strings and Dualit…
We discuss the use of field theory for the exact determination of universal properties in two-dimensional statistical mechanics. After a compact derivation of critical exponents of main universality classes, we turn to the off-critical…
These third-year lecture notes are designed for a 1-semester course in topological quantum field theory (TQFT). Assumed background in mathematics and physics are only standard second-year subjects: multivariable calculus, introduction to…
In this thesis we discuss some topics about topology and superstring backgrounds with D-branes. We start with a mathematical review about generalized homology and cohomology theories and the Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequence, in order to…
The aim of these notes is to give recent developments in string theory. In particular, we discuss the string spectrums, compactifications, brane physics and dualities.
The first part of these lectures contains an introductory review of the AdS/CFT duality and of its tests. Applications to thermal gauge theory are also discussed briefly. The second part is devoted to a review of gauge-string dualities…
In this article we will overview several aspects of the string landscape, namely intersecting D-brane models and their statistics, possible model independent LHC signatures of intersecting brane models, flux compactification, moduli…
We review various aspects of classical solutions in string theories. Emphasis is placed on their supersymmetry properties, their special roles in string dualities and microscopic interpretations. Topics include black hole solutions in…
What is quantum geometry? This question is becoming a popular leitmotiv in theoretical physics and in mathematics. Conformal field theory may catch a glimpse of the right answer. We review global aspects of the geometry of conformal fields,…
I discuss (ontologies_and_ontological_knowledge_bases / formal_methods_and_theories) duality and its category theory extensions as a step toward a solution to Knowledge-Based Systems Theory. In particular I focus on the example of the…
This is the first of a series of papers discussing canonical aspects of the two-dimensional non-linear sigma model in the presence of conformal defects on the world-sheet in the framework of gerbe theory. In the paper, the basic tools of…
The key open problem of string theory remains its non-perturbative completion to M-theory. A decisive hint to its inner workings comes from numerous appearances of higher structures in the limits of M-theory that are already understood,…
The aim of these lectures is to give an introduction to several topics which lie at the intersection of string theory, gravity theory and gravity phenomenology. One successively reviews: (i) the "membrane" approach to the dissipative…
We describe some recent progress in understanding and formulating string theory which is based on extensive studies of strings in lower (D=2) dimension. At the center is a large $W_{\infty}$ symmetry that appears most simply in the matrix…
We discuss carefully the vertices which describe the dipole open strings and closed strings on a D-brane with magnetic flux on a torus. Translation invariance along closed cycles forces surprisingly closed string vertices written in open…
We study decay of unstable D-branes in string theory in the presence of electric field, and show that the classical open string theory results for various properties of the final state agree with the properties of closed string states into…
In these lectures we review the properties of a boosted and rotated boundary state and of a boundary state with an abelian gauge field deriving from it the Dirac-Born-Infeld action and a newly constructed class of classical solutions. We…
In this talk I shall try to give an elementary introduction to certain areas of mathematical physics where the idea of moduli space is used to help solve problems or to further our understanding. In the wide area of gauge theory, I shall…
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…
Lecture notes given at the summer school ``Applications of random matrices to physics", Les Houches, June 2004.
These lecture notes give an introduction to the theory of interacting particle systems. The main subjects are the construction using generators and graphical representations, the mean field limit, stochastic order, duality, and the relation…