Related papers: String Duality and Novel Theories without Gravity
Recent investigations involving the decay of unstable D-branes in string theory suggest that the tree level open string theory which describes the dynamics of the D-brane already knows about the closed string states produced in the decay of…
This elementary introduction to string field theory highlights the features and the limitations of this approach to quantum gravity as it is currently understood. String field theory is a formulation of string theory as a field theory in…
Quantum theory of 2d gravity for $c>1$ is examined as a non-critical string theory by taking account of the loop-correction of open strings whose end points are on the 2d world surface of the closed string. This loop-correction leads to a…
This lecture surveys a few loosely related topics, ranging from the scarcity of quantum field theories -- and the role that this has played, and still plays, in physics -- to paradoxes involving black holes in soluble two dimensional string…
We show that field theories with light-like noncommutativity, that is with $\theta^{0i}=-\theta^{1i}$, are unitary quantum theories, and that they can be obtained as decoupled field theory limits of string theory with D-branes in a…
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…
I describe our understanding of physics near the planck length, in particular the great progress of the last four years in string theory. Superstring theory, and a recent extension called M theory, are leading candidates for a quantum…
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 recent work Kachru, Kumar and Silverstein introduced a special class of non-supersymmetric type II string theories in which the cosmological constant vanishes at the first two orders of perturbation theory. Heuristic arguments suggest…
Duality symmetries in supergravity theories, together with their implications for string theory, are reviewed.
We argue that vacua of string theory which asymptote at weak coupling to linear dilaton backgrounds are holographic. The full string theory in such vacua is ``dual'' to a theory without gravity in fewer dimensions. The dual theory is…
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…
String theory appears to admit a group of discrete field transformations -- called $S$ dualities -- as exact non-perturbative quantum symmetries. Mathematically, they are rather analogous to the better-known $T$ duality symmetries, which…
Gravity duals for little string theories --- which give rise to four-dimensional theories that undergo permanent confinement in the infrared --- have not been studied in great detail. We address this question in the framework of heterotic…
We study string theory in supersymmetric time-dependent backgrounds. In the framework of general relativity, supersymmetry for spacetimes without flux implies the existence of a covariantly constant null vector, and a relatively simple form…
The status of string theory is reviewed, and major recent developments - especially those in going beyond perturbation theory in the string theory and quantum field theory frameworks - are discussed. This analysis helps better understand…
A review is given of recent research on two-dimensional gauge theories, with particular emphasis on the equivalence between these theories and certain string theories with a two-dimensional target space. Some related open problems are…
In this lecture we review some of the recent developments in string theory on an introductory and qualitative level. In particular we focus on S-T-U dualities of toroidally compactified ten-dimensional string theories and outline the…
String theory requires two kinds of loop expansion: classical $(\alpha')$ worldsheet loops with expansion parameter $<T>$ where $T$ is a modulus field, and quantum $(\hbar)$ spacetime loops with expansion parameter $<S>$ where $S$ is the…
In six dimensions, cancellation of gauge, gravitational, and mixed anomalies strongly constrains the set of quantum field theories which can be coupled consistently to gravity. We show that for some classes of six-dimensional supersymmetric…