Deutsch Intern
Theoretical Physics III

String Theory I

Lecture: "String Theory II"

Dr. René Meyer


Time and Venue:

Monday    12 - 14, M1.03.020
Wednesday 10-12, M1.03.020
Exercises Thursday 10 - 12 Uhr, M1.03.0202

First Lecture: Monday Oct 15 2018 12:15pm sharp

Topics

String Theory is one of the most successful attempts to quantitze gravity. The extended nature of the string (as opposed to the point particle nature in quantum field theory), regularizes the the nonrenormalizable UV divergencies of General Relativity, which itself is recovered as the effective theory in the low energy limit.  Furthermore, String Theory naturally includes the building blocks of the standard model of particle physics, gauge fields and chiral fermions, as low energy degrees of freedoms. String Theory hence is a unified theory of gravity and quantum field theory. This lecture, which builds up onto my lecture String Theory I, considers the following advanced concepts of supersymmetric string theory:

1) Review of the bosonic string 

2) Clifford algebras in diverse dimensions, fermionic fields

3) Supersymmetry in two and more dimensions

4) Classical and quantized Ramond-Neveau-Schwarz Type IIA/IIB Superstring 

5) Type I and Heterotic Superstring Theories

6) Dualities between different superstring theories and M Theory in eleven dimensions

7) D-Branes and supersymmetric gauge theories

8) Supergravity and the AdS/CFT Correspondence

Literatur

Recommended Reading:

Tong: "String Theory", https://arxiv.org/abs/0908.0333v3 
Zwiebach: "A First Course in String Theory", 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press
Polchinski: "String Theory", Vol. 1, Cambridge University Press
Di Francesco, Mathieu, Senechal, "Conformal Field Theory", Springer (Ch. 5 and 6)

Additional Sources:

Szabo: BUSSTEP Lectures on String Theory https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0207142
Arutyunov: Lectures on String Theory, http://stringworld.ru/files/Arutyunov_G._Lectures_on_string_theory.pdf
Green, Schwarz, Witten, "Superstring theory", Vol. 1, Cambridge University Press
Becker, Becker, Schwarz, "String Theory and M Theory", Cambridge University Press
Kiritsis, "String Theory in a Nutshell", Princeton University Press

Exercise Sheets: