Superstrings The First 15 Years Of Superstring Theory Reprints Commentary In 2 Volumes

The discovery by Green and Schwarz in 1984 that ten-dimensional superstring theory is anomaly-free and finite only if the Yang-Mills gauge group is SO(32) or E8 x E8 has made the phenomenological possibilities of superstrings evident. Ths has resulted in a sudden surge of interest in superstrings unification. Since this fast-developing field is new to almost all theoretical physicist, this collection of basic pre-1985 references should be very valuable. This two volumes contain over 1000 pages of reprints plus some introductory comments by J Schwarz.

Twenty-five years ago, Michael Green, John Schwarz, and Edward Witten wrote two volumes on string theory. Published during a period of rapid progress in this subject, these volumes were highly influential for a generation of students and researchers. Despite the immense progress that has been made in the field since then, the systematic exposition of the foundations of superstring theory presented in these volumes is just as relevant today as when first published. Volume 2 is concerned with the evaluation of one-loop amplitudes, the study of anomalies and phenomenology. It examines the low energy effective field theory analysis of anomalies, the emergence of the gauge groups E8 x E8 and SO(32) and the four-dimensional physics that arises by compactification of six extra dimensions. Featuring a new Preface setting the work in context in light of recent advances, this book is invaluable for graduate students and researchers in high energy physics and astrophysics, as well as mathematicians.

A two-volume systematic exposition of superstring theory and its applications which presents many of the new mathematical tools that theoretical physicists are likely to need in coming years. This volume contains an introduction to superstrings

Twenty-five years ago, Michael Green, John Schwarz, and Edward Witten wrote two volumes on string theory. Published during a period of rapid progress in this subject, these volumes were highly influential for a generation of students and researchers. Despite the immense progress that has been made in the field since then, the systematic exposition of the foundations of superstring theory presented in these volumes is just as relevant today as when first published. A self-contained introduction to superstrings, Volume 1 begins with an elementary treatment of the bosonic string, before describing the incorporation of additional degrees of freedom: fermionic degrees of freedom leading to supersymmetry and internal quantum numbers leading to gauge interactions. A detailed discussion of the evaluation of tree-approximation scattering amplitudes is also given. Featuring a new preface setting the work in context in light of recent advances, this book is invaluable for graduate students and researchers in general relativity and elementary particle theory.

We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough. Niels Bohr Superstring theory has emerged as the most promising candidate for a quan tum theory of all known interactions. Superstrings apparently solve a problem that has defied solution for the past 50 years, namely the unification of the two great fundamental physical theories of the century, quantum field theory and general relativity. Superstring theory introduces an entirely new physical picture into theoretical physics and a new mathematics that has startled even the mathematicians. Ironically, although superstring theory is supposed to provide a unified field theory of the universe, the theory itself often seems like a confused jumble offolklore, random rules of thumb, and intuition. This is because the develop ment of superstring theory has been unlike that of any other theory, such as general relativity, which began with a geometry and an action and later evolved into a quantum theory. Superstring theory, by contrast, has been evolving backward for the past 20 years. It has a bizarre history, beginning with the purely accidental discovery of the quantum theory in 1968 by G. Veneziano and M. Suzuki. Thumbing through old math books, they stumbled by chance on the Beta function, written down in the last century by mathematician Leonhard Euler.

String Theory, now almost 30 years of age, was partly forgotten but came back to the forefront of theoretical particle physics in 1984. In this book, based on lectures by the author at the K.U.Leuven and at the University of Padova, Elias Kiritsis takes the reader through the developments of the last 15 years: conformal field theory, the various superstrings and their spectra, compactifications, and the effective description of low energy degrees of freedom. It ends by showing a glimpse of the most recent developments, dualities of strings and higher dimensional objects, that influence both traditional field theory and present day mathematics. Readership: Theoretical physicists, and mathematicians with an interest in modern string theory. 1. Introduction 2. Historical perspective 3. Classical string theory 3.1. The point particle 3.2. Relativistic strings 3.3. Oscillator expansions 4. Quantization of the bosonic string 4.1. Covariant canonical quantization 4.2. Light-cone quantization 4.3. Spectrum of the bosonic string 4.4. Path integral quantization 4.5. Topologically non-trivial world-sheets 4.6. BRST primer 4.7. BRST in string theory and the physical spectrum 4.8. Interactions and loop amplitudes 5. Conformal field theory 5.1. Conformal transformations 5.2. Conformally invariant field theory 5.3. Radial quantization 5.4. Example: the free boson 5.5. The central charge 5.6. The free fermion 5.7. Mode expansions 5.8. The Hilbert space 5.9. Representations of the conformal algebra 5.10. Affine algebras 5.11. Free fermions and O(N) affine symmetry 5.12. N=1 superconformal symmetry 5.13. N=2 superconformal symmetry 5.14. N=4 superconformal symmetry 5.15. The CFT of ghosts 6. CFT on the torus 6.1. Compact scalars 6.2. Enhanced symmetry and the string Higgs effect 6.3. T-duality 6.4. Free fermions on the torus 6.5. Bosonization 6.6. Orbifolds 6.7. CFT on higher-genus Riemann surfaces 7. Scattering amplitudes and vertex operators of bosonic strings 8. Strings in background fields and low-energy effective actions 9. Superstrings and supersymmetry 9.1. Closed (type-II) superstrings 9.2. Massless R-R states 9.3. Type-I superstrings 9.4. Heterotic superstrings 9.5. Superstring vertex operators 9.6. Supersymmetric effective actions 10. Anomalies 11. Compactification and supersymmetry breaking 11.1. Toroidal compactifications 11.2. Compactification on non-trivial manifolds 11.3. World-sheet versus spacetime supersymmetry 11.4. Heterotic orbifold compactifications with N=2 supersymmetry 11.5. Spontaneous supersymmetry breaking 11.6. Heterotic N=1 theories and chirality in four dimensions 11.7. Orbifold compactifications of the type-II string 12. Loop corrections to effective couplings in string theory 12.1. Calculation of gauge thresholds 12.2. On-shell infrared regularization 12.3. Gravitational thresholds 12.4. Anomalous U(1)?s 12.5. N=1,2 examples of thresholds corrections 12.6. N=2 universality of thresholds 12.7. Unification 13. Non-perturbative string dualities: a foreword 13.1. Antisymmetric tensors and p-branes 13.2. BPS states and bounds 13.3. Heterotic/type-I duality in ten dimensions 13.4. Type-IIA versus M-theory 13.5. M-theory and the E8xE8 heterotic string 13.6. Self-duality of the type-IIB string 13.7. D-branes are the type-II R-R charged states 13.8. D-brane actions 13.9. Heterotic/type-II duality in six and four dimensions 14. Outlook Appendices A. Theta functions B. Toroidal lattice sums C. Toroidal Kaluza-Klein reduction D. N=1,2,4, D=4 supergravity coupled to matter E. BPS Multiplets and helicity supertrace formulae F. Modular forms G. Helicity string partition functions H. Electric-Magnetic duality in D=4 References ISBN10:9061868947 Imprint:Leuven University Press Language: English NUR * 925 Theoretische natuurkunde * Number of pages: v-316 * Width: 16 cm * Height: 24 cm * Elias Kiritsis, Author (all publications from this author/editor with Leuven University Press)

Called by some "the theory of everything," superstrings may solve a problem which has eluded physicists for the past 50 years -- the final unification of the two great theories of the twentieth century, general relativity and quantum field theory. This is a course-tested comprehensive introductory graduate text on superstrings which stresses the most current areas of interest, not covered in other presentation, including: string field theory, multi loops, Teichmueller spaces, conformal field theory, and four-dimensional strings. The book begins with a simple discussion of point particle theory, and uses the Feynman path integral technique to unify the presentation of superstrings. Prerequisites are an aquaintance with quantum mechanics and relativity. This second edition has been revised and updated throughout.