Kaku Introduction to Superstrings

Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4684-0319-0
Verlag: Springer US
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 568 Seiten, Web PDF

Reihe: Graduate Texts in Contemporary Physics

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.

Zielgruppe

Lower undergraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kaku, Michio

Inhaltsverzeichnis

I. First Quantization and Path Integrals.- 1 Path Integrals and Point Particles.- 2 Nambu-Goto Strings.- 3 Superstrings.- 4 Conformal Field Theory and Kac-Moody Algebras.- 5 Multiloops and Teichmüller Spaces.- II. Second Quantization and the Search for Geometry.- 6 Light Cone Field Theory.- 7 BRST Field Theory.- 8 Geometric String Field Theory.- III. Phenomenology and Model Building.- 9 Anomalies and the Atiyah-Singer Theorem.- 10 Heterotic Strings and Compactification.- 11 Calabi-Yau Spaces and Orbifolds.- A. 1. A Brief Introduction to Group Theory.- A.2. A Brief Introduction to General Relativity.- A.3. A Brief Introduction to the Theory of Forms.- A.4. A Brief Introduction to Supersymmetry.- A.5. A Brief Introduction to Supergravity.- A.6. Glossary of Terms.- A.7. Notation.- References.