Category Archives: Lecture Notes

Today we discussed the String Theory Landscape. The Landscape – what’s all the fuss about? Foci for today: Weinberg PRL on cosmological constant and anthropic principle Is there an anthropic bound on cosmological constant (i.e. a “prior” that we exist)? … Continue reading →

Here are the files I lectured from today: Moving D-brane separation as toy model of scalar field involved in inflation (from my TASI lectures) Tracking fluctuations as well as motions (co-written with O.Saremi and L.Kofman)

Today we give an introduction to the AdS/CFT Correspondence. This is one of the most important advances in string or particle theory in the past decade-plus!  (Intro to AdS/CFT: p=3 and other cases)

Today we discuss BPS M-brane and Dp-brane geometries. We look at where these classical geometries become unreliable, by examining the two loop counting parameters of string theory: (a) the spacetime curvature in string units and (b) the [exponential of the] … Continue reading →

Today we discuss BPS states, the Bogomolnyi bound, Kaluza-Klein reduction on the circle, and S-duality.  Here are my notes (BPS states and S Duality).

Here are my [overcomplete] notes: The [super]string density of states and the Hagedorn temperature The Superstring Duality Web, Part 1: Why strings carry NS-NS two-form charge while Dp-branes carry R-R (p+1)-form charge. Identifying conserved charges.

Today’s focus was how to calculate the mass of open strings stretched between Dp-branes. Specifically, we worked out the cases of 1 Dp-brane, which has a U(1) Maxwell field (with some transverse scalars) living on it; N Dp-branes, which have … Continue reading →

Today we explain the light-front gauge incarnation of kappa-symmetry, a local fermionic symmetry on the worldline/worldsheet, which permits construction of a manifestly supersymmetric action. We start by constructing the story for the superparticle. Then we move to the superstring. In … Continue reading →