Related papers: Introduction to M Theory and AdS/CFT Duality
In this talk I will survey some of the basic facts about superstring theories in 10 dimensions and the dualities that relate them to M theory in 11 dimensions. Then I will mention some important unresolved issues.
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…
This talk is divided into two parts. The first part reviews some of the duality relationships between superstring theories. These relationships are interpreted as providing evidence for the existence of a unique underlying fundamental…
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…
These lectures begin by reviewing the evidence for S duality of the toroidally compactified heterotic string in 4d that was obtained in the period 1992--94. Next they review recently discovered dualities that relate all five of the 10d…
A proposed duality between type IIB superstring theory on R^9 X S^1 and a conjectured 11D fundamental theory (``M theory'') on R^9 X T^2 is investigated. Simple heuristic reasoning leads to a consistent picture relating the various p-branes…
One of the main topics in the modern String Theory are the AdS/CFT dualities. Proving such conjectures is extremely difficult since the gauge and string theory perturbative regimes do not overlap. In this perspective, the discovery of…
Much of modern string theory research concerns AdS/CFT duality, or more generally, gauge/gravity duality. The main subjects are a) Testing and understanding such dualities by exploring how they work for systems with a lot of supersymmetry…
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…
We study and extend the duality web unifying different decoupling limits of type II superstring theories and M-theory. We systematically build connections to different corners, such as Matrix theories, nonrelativistic string and M-theory,…
Versions of M-theory are found in spacetime signatures (9,2) and (6,5), in addition to the usual M-theory in 10+1 dimensions, and these give rise to type IIA string theories in 10-dimensional spacetime signatures (10,0),(9,1),(8,2),(6,4)…
Superunification underwent a major paradigm shift in 1984 when eleven-dimensional supergravity was knocked off its pedestal by ten-dimensional superstrings. This last year has witnessed a new shift of equal proportions: perturbative…
Recent developments in superstring theory have led to major advances in understanding. After reviewing where things stood earlier, we sketch the impact of recently identified dualities and D-branes, as well as a hidden eleventh dimension.
In these lecture notes, an introduction to superstring theory is presented. Classical strings, covariant and light-cone quantization, supersymmetric strings, anomaly cancelation, compactification, T-duality, supersymmetry breaking, and…
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…
The connection between IIA superstring theory compactified on a circle of radius R and IIB theory compactified on a circle of radius 1/R is reexamined from the perspective of N=2, D=9 space-time supersymmetry. We argue that the consistency…
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…
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…
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…
This thesis discusses various aspects of duality in quantum field theory and string theory. In the first part we consider duality in topological quantum field theories, concentrating on the Donaldson and Seiberg-Witten theories as (dual)…