Designed as a sequel to the authors' Introduction to Gauge Field Theory, Supersymmetric Gauge Field Theory and String Theory introduces first-year graduate students to supersymmetric theories, including supergravity and superstring theories. Starting with the necessary background in quantum field theory, the book covers the three key topics of high-energy physics. The emphasis is on practical calculations rather than abstract generalities or phenomenological results. Where possible, the authors show how to calculate, connecting the theoretical with the phenomenological. While the field continues to advance and grow, this book addresses the basic theory at the core and will likely remain relevant even if more advanced ideas change.
Designed as a sequel to the authors' Introduction to Gauge Field Theory, Supersymmetric Gauge Field Theory and String Theory introduces first-year graduate students to supersymmetric theories, including supergravity and superstring theories. Starting with the necessary background in quantum field theory, the book covers the three key topics of high-energy physics. The emphasis is on practical calculations rather than abstract generalities or phenomenological results. Where possible, the authors show how to calculate, connecting the theoretical with the phenomenological. While the field continues to advance and grow, this book addresses the basic theory at the core and will likely remain relevant even if more advanced ideas change.
Cosmology in Gauge Field Theory and String Theory focuses on the cosmological implications of the gauge theories of particle physics and of string theory. The book first examines the universe's series of phase transitions in which the successive gauge symmetries of the higher-temperature phase were spontaneously broken after the big bang, discussing relics of these phase transitions, more generic relics (baryons, neutrinos, axions), and supersymmetric particles (neutralinos and gravitinos). The author next studies supersymmetric theory, supergravity theory, and the constraints on the underlying field theory of the universe's inflationary era. The book concludes with a discussion of black hole solutions of the supergravity theory that approximates string theory at low energies and the insight that string theory affords into the microscopic origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. Cosmology in Gauge Field Theory and String Theory provides a modern introduction to these important problems from a particle physicist's perspective. It is intended as an introductory textbook for a first course on the subject at a graduate level.
The past decade has witnessed dramatic developments in the field of theoretical physics. This book is a comprehensive introduction to these recent developments. It contains a review of the Standard Model, covering non-perturbative topics, and a discussion of grand unified theories and magnetic monopoles. It introduces the basics of supersymmetry and its phenomenology, and includes dynamics, dynamical supersymmetry breaking, and electric-magnetic duality. The book then covers general relativity and the big bang theory, and the basic issues in inflationary cosmologies before discussing the spectra of known string theories and the features of their interactions. The book also includes brief introductions to technicolor, large extra dimensions, and the Randall-Sundrum theory of warped spaces. This will be of great interest to graduates and researchers in the fields of particle theory, string theory, astrophysics and cosmology. The book contains several problems, and password protected solutions will be available to lecturers at www.cambridge.org/9780521858410.
Introduction to Gauge Field Theory provides comprehensive coverage of modern relativistic quantum field theory, emphasizing the details of actual calculations rather than the phenomenology of the applications. Forming a foundation in the subject, the book assumes knowledge of relativistic quantum mechanics, but not of quantum field theory. The book is ideal for graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and researchers in the field of particle physics.
Understanding the dynamics of gauge theories is crucial, given the fact that all known interactions are based on the principle of local gauge symmetry. Beyond the perturbative regime, however, this is a notoriously difficult problem. Requiring invariance under supersymmetry turns out to be a suitable tool for analyzing supersymmetric gauge theories over a larger region of the space of parameters. Supersymmetric quantum field theories in four dimensions with extended N=2 supersymmetry are further constrained and have therefore been a fertile field of research in theoretical physics for quite some time. Moreover, there are far-reaching mathematical ramifications that have led to a successful dialogue with differential and algebraic geometry. These lecture notes aim to introduce students of modern theoretical physics to the fascinating developments in the understanding of N=2 supersymmetric gauge theories in a coherent fashion. Starting with a gentle introduction to electric-magnetic duality, the author guides readers through the key milestones in the field, which include the work of Seiberg and Witten, Nekrasov, Gaiotto and many others. As an advanced graduate level text, it assumes that readers have a working knowledge of supersymmetry including the formalism of superfields, as well as of quantum field theory techniques such as regularization, renormalization and anomalies. After his graduation from the University of Tokyo, Yuji Tachikawa worked at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton and the Kavli Institute for Physics and Mathematics of the Universe. Presently at the Department of Physics, University of Tokyo, Tachikawa is the author of several important papers in supersymmetric quantum field theories and string theory.
This book introduces two-dimensional supersymmetric field theories with emphasis on both linear and non-linear sigma models. Complex differential geometry, in connection with supersymmetry, has played a key role in most developments of the last thirty years in quantum field theory and string theory. Both structures introduce a great deal of rigidity compared to the more general categories of non-supersymmetric theories and real differential geometry, allowing for many general conceptual results and detailed quantitative predictions. Two-dimensional (0,2) supersymmetric quantum field theories provide a natural arena for the fruitful interplay between geometry and quantum field theory. These theories play an important role in string theory and provide generalizations, still to be explored fully, of rich structures such as mirror symmetry. They also have applications to non-perturbative four-dimensional physics, for instance as descriptions of surface defects or low energy dynamics of solitonic strings in four-dimensional supersymmetric theories. The purpose of these lecture notes is to acquaint the reader with these fascinating theories, assuming a background in conformal theory, quantum field theory and differential geometry at the beginning graduate level. In order to investigate the profound relations between structures from complex geometry and field theory the text begins with a thorough examination of the basic structures of (0,2) quantum field theory and conformal field theory. Next, a simple class of Lagrangian theories, the (0,2) Landau-Ginzburg models, are discussed, together with the resulting renormalization group flows, dynamics, and symmetries. After a thorough introduction and examination of (0,2) non-linear sigma models, the text introduces linear sigma models that, in particular, provide a unified treatment of non-linear sigma models and Landau-Ginzburg theories. Many exercises, along with discussions of relevant mathematical notions and important open problems in the field, are included in the text.
String theory is one of the most exciting and challenging areas of modern theoretical physics. This book guides the reader from the basics of string theory to recent developments. It introduces the basics of perturbative string theory, world-sheet supersymmetry, space-time supersymmetry, conformal field theory and the heterotic string, before describing modern developments, including D-branes, string dualities and M-theory. It then covers string geometry and flux compactifications, applications to cosmology and particle physics, black holes in string theory and M-theory, and the microscopic origin of black-hole entropy. It concludes with Matrix theory, the AdS/CFT duality and its generalizations. This book is ideal for graduate students and researchers in modern string theory, and will make an excellent textbook for a one-year course on string theory. It contains over 120 exercises with solutions, and over 200 homework problems with solutions available on a password protected website for lecturers at www.cambridge.org/9780521860697.
This volume covers the most up-to-date findings on string field theory. It is presented in a new approach as a result of insights gained from the theory. This includes the use of a universal method for treating free field theories, which allows the derivation of a single, simple, free, local, Poincare-invariant, gauge-invariant action that can be applied directly to any fields.
Contains selection of expository and research article by lecturers at the school. Highlights current interests of researchers working at the interface between string theory and algebraic supergravity, supersymmetry, D-branes, the McKay correspondence andFourer-Mukai transform.
