Barton Zwiebach is once again faithful to his goal of making string theory accessible to undergraduates. Complete and thorough in its coverage, the author presents the main concepts of string theory in a concrete and physical way in order to develop intuition before formalism, often through simplified and illustrative examples. This new edition now includes AdS/CFT correspondence, which is the hottest area of string theory right now as well as introducing superstrings. The text is perfectly suited to introductory courses in string theory for students with a background in mathematics and physics. New sections cover strings on orbifolds, cosmic strings, moduli stabilization, and the string theory landscape.
ISBN-13: 9780521880329
Media Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: 01-22-2009
Pages: 694
Product Dimensions: 7.50(w) x 9.70(h) x 1.20(d)
Barton Zwiebach is Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His central contributions have been in the area of string field theory, where he did the early work on the construction of the field theory of open strings and then developed the field theory of closed strings. He has also made important contributions to the subjects of D-branes with exceptional symmetry and tachyon condensation.
Table of Contents
Foreword; Preface; Acknowledgements; Part I. Basics: 1. A brief introduction; 2. Special relativity and extra dimensions; 3. Electromagnetism and gravitation in various dimensions; 4. Nonrelativistic strings; 5. The relativistic point particle; 6. Relativistic strings; 7. Strong parameterization and classical motion; 8. World-sheet currents; 9. Light-cone relativistic strings; 10. Light-cone fields and particles; 11. The relativistic quantum point particle; 12, Relativistic quantum closed strings; 13. Relativistic quantum closed strings; 14. A look at relativistic superstrings; Part II. Developments: 15. D-branes and gauge fields; 16. String charge and electric charge; 17. T-duality of closed strings; 18. T-duality of open strings; 19. Electromagnetism fields in D-branes; 20. Nonlinear and Born-Infeld electrodynamics; 21. Strong theory and particle physics; 22. String thermodynamics and black holes; 23. Strong interactions and AdS/CFT; 24. Covariant string quantization; 25. String interactions and Riemann surfaces; 26. Loop amplitudes in string theory; References; Index.
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