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Introduction to Superstrings

  • Textbook
  • © 1988

Overview

Authors:
  1. Michio Kaku

    1. Department of Physics, City College of the City University of New York, New York, USA

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Part of the book series: Graduate Texts in Contemporary Physics (GTCP)

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Table of contents (11 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xvi
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  2. First Quantization and Path Integrals

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Path Integrals and Point Particles

      • Michio Kaku
      Pages 3-48

    3. Nambu-Goto Strings

      • Michio Kaku
      Pages 49-98

    4. Superstrings

      • Michio Kaku
      Pages 99-138

    5. Conformal Field Theory and Kac-Moody Algebras

      • Michio Kaku
      Pages 139-176

    6. Multiloops and Teichmüller Spaces

      • Michio Kaku
      Pages 177-242

  3. Second Quantization and the Search for Geometry

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 243-243
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    2. Light Cone Field Theory

      • Michio Kaku
      Pages 245-288

    3. BRST Field Theory

      • Michio Kaku
      Pages 289-330

    4. Geometric String Field Theory

      • Michio Kaku
      Pages 331-372

  4. Phenomenology and Model Building

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 373-373
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    2. Anomalies and the Atiyah-Singer Theorem

      • Michio Kaku
      Pages 375-416

    3. Heterotic Strings and Compactification

      • Michio Kaku
      Pages 417-451

    4. Calabi-Yau Spaces and Orbifolds

      • Michio Kaku
      Pages 452-510

  5. Back Matter

    Pages 511-568
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Keywords

About this book

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.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Physics, City College of the City University of New York, New York, USA

    Michio Kaku

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