Proseminar String Theory

Matthias Gaberdiel, Ilka Brunner, Ingo Kirsch, Marco Baumgartl, Christoph Keller, Giuseppe Milanesi , Sebastiano Rossi, Cornelius Schmidt-Colinet,

The proseminar will take place on Mondays, 10:45 - 12:30, HPZ E9.

The requirements to obtain a Testat are the following:

You must give a 90 minute presentation on the chosen topic.

One week before the talk you must hand in a written report of your seminar to your tutor.

You must attend at least 80% of the talks.

Date and Time	Talk	Speaker	Tutor
15.10. 10.45	The classical bosonic string	Stephan Bühler	Ilka Brunner
22.10. 10.45	The free boson	Jakob Salfeld-Nebgen	Marco Baumgartl
29.10. 10.45	Light-cone quantisation	Patrick Nüesch	Sebastiano Rossi
05.11. 10.45	Superconformal Field Theory	Bastien Milani	Cornelius Schmidt-Colinet
12.11. 10.45	Superstrings	Mathias Brucherseifer	Ingo Kirsch
19.11. 10.45	GSO projection and modular invariance	Roger Sax	Marco Baumgartl
26.11. 10.45	Vertex operators and the Veneziano amplitude	Marco de Stefani	Giuseppe Milanesi
03.12. 10.45	Torus compactifications and T-duality	Raphael Honegger	Ingo Kirsch
10.12. 08.45	Orbifolds	Roland Bauerschmidt	Matthias Gaberdiel
10.12. 10.45	Kaluza-Klein compactification and 4d physics	Michael Kay	Stefan Hohenegger
17.12. 10.45	D-branes	Claude Eicher	Ilka Brunner

The Topics

1. The classical bosonic string
   Nambu-Goto action, Polyakov action and its symmetries, oscillator expansion [LT §2], [GSWI §2.1], [Z], [OY].
2. The free boson
   Conformal invariance of the free boson theory, the Virasoro algebra and its central extension [Ga §3.1 - 3.2].
3. Light-cone quantisation
   Light-cone quantisation, D=26 from Lorentz symmetry, the spectrum (tachyon) [GSWI §2.3], [LT §3.2, 3.3], [Z], [S], [GGRT].
4. Superconformal Field Theory
   The free boson and free fermion theory, supersymmetry, N=1 superconformal algebra, [GSWI §4.1], [Ga §3.3] .
5. Superstrings
   Covariant and light-cone quantisation of the NS-R action, [LT §8], [GSWI §4.2 and 4.3].
6. GSO-projection and modular invariance
   GSO-projection, spin structures and modular invariance, Type II theories and their spectrum [LT §8 and 9], [GSWI §4.3.3 and 5.3].
7. Vertex operators and the Veneziano amplitude
   Vertex operators, n-point functions of tachyons [GSWI §7.1], [PI §6.4], [Z §22].
8. Torus compactifications and T-duality
   Bosonic strings on tori and their duality symmetries [P §8], [G §8.1], [LT §10.1-10.2], [OY].
9. Orbifolds
   Construction of orbifolds, in particular S1/Z2, non-abelian orbifolds [G §8.3 - 8.5], [O], [OY].
10. Kaluza-Klein compactification and 4d physics
    Kaluza-Klein reduction on compact manifolds, 4d spectrum [GSW §14.1 & §14.2].
11. D-branes
    Boundary conditions, Chan-Paton factors, T-duality, BPS spectrum of Type II theories [PI §8 and PII §13], [PT], [B].

List of references

[LT]	D. Lüst, S. Theisen, Lectures on string theory , Lecture Notes in Physics, Springer (1989).
[GSW]	M.B. Green, J.H. Schwarz, E. Witten, Superstring Theory I and II , Cambridge University Press (1987) and (1988).
[Z]	B. Zwiebach, A first Course in String Theory, Cambridge University Press (2004).
[G]	P. Ginsparg, Applied Conformal Field Theory, in : Les Houches Summer School 1988, 1-168, http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9108028.
[Ga]	M.R. Gaberdiel, Konforme Feldtheorie, Vorlesungsskript ETH Zürich (2003).
[GT]	P. Goddard, C.B. Thorn, Compatibility of the dual Pomeron with unitarity and the absence of ghosts in the dual resonance model, Phys. Lett. B40, 235 (1972).
[GGRT]	P. Goddard, J. Goldstone, C. Rebbi, C.B. Thorn, Quantum dynamics of a massless relativistic string, Nucl. Phys. B56, 109 (1973).
[P]	J. Polchinski, String Theory I & II, Cambridge University Press (1998).
[PT]	J. Polchinski, TASI Lectures on D-Branes, http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/9611050.
[O]	L. Dixon, J. Harvey, C. Vafa, E. Witten, Strings on orbifolds I and II, Nucl. Phys. B261, 678 (1985) and Nucl. Phys. B274, 295 (1986).
[B]	C.P. Bachas, Lectures on D-branes, http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/9806199.
[CFT]	P. Di Francesco, P. Mathieu, D. Sénéchal, Conformal field theory, Springer Verlag New York (1997).
[H]	D.J. Gross, J.A. Harvey, E.J. Martinec, R. Rohm, Heterotic string theory. 1. The free heterotic string, Nucl. Phys. B256, 253 (1985).
[OY]	H. Ooguri, Z. Yin, Lectures on perturbative string theories, http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-th/9612254.
[S]	B. Schellekens, Introduction to string theory, http://www.nikhef.nl/~t58/Site/Lecture%20Notes.html.

Some online links to journals and the arXiv

• The ArXiv (a preprint server)
• Communications in Mathematical Physics
• Nuclear Physics B
• Physics Letters B

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written and maintained by Matthias Gaberdiel.