Synopses & Reviews
In a distilled and pedagogical fashion, the contributions to this volume of the famous summer school in Les Houches cover the recent developments in supersymmetric string theory, the gauge theory/string theory correspondence and string duality. Further chapters deal with quantum gravity and D-brane geometry. Black hole mechanics and cosmology are treated too, as well as the AdS-CFT correspondence. The book is a comprehensive introduction to the recent developments in string/M-theory and quantum gravity. It addresses graduate students in physics and astrophysics.
Synopsis
The contributions to this volume of the famous summer school in Les Houches cover the recent developments in supersymmetric string theory, the gauge theory/string theory correspondence and string duality. The book is a comprehensive introduction to the recent developments in string/M-theory and quantum gravity.
Table of Contents
From the Contents: Supergravity.- Supersymmetric Gauge Theories.- An Introduction to Duality Symmetries in String Theory.- Les Houches Lectures on Large N Field Theories and Gravity.- D-Branes on the Conifold and N = 1 Gauge/Gravity Dualities.- De Sitter Space.- String Compactification with N = 1 Supersymmetry.- Lectures on Open Strings, and Noncommutative Gauge Theories.- Condensates Near the Argyres-Douglas Point in SU (2) Gauge Theory with Broken N = 2 Supersymmetry.- Quantum Field Theory with Extra Dimensions.- Special Holonomy Spaces and M-Theory.- Four Dimensional Non-Critical Strings.- U-Opportunities: Why is Ten Equal to Ten?- Exact Answers to Approximate Questions - Noncommutative Dipoles, Open Wilson Lines and UV-IR Duality.- Open-String Models with Broken Supersymmetry.- On Field Theory of Open Strings, Tachyon Condensation and Closed Strings.