Category Archives: Lecture Notes

Lecture Notes st20080118 Synopsis Today we talked about the equations of motion and boundary conditions for a classical relativistic string, in an arbitrary worldsheet coordinate system. We found that the only two boundary conditions for open strings physically consistent with … Continue reading →

Download the lecture notes here: 16jan2008 Synopsis The focus for today is: formulating the action principle for strings, both non-relativistic and relativistic. We will derive/motivate the Nambu-Goto action principle, and start discussing boundary conditions. This leads to the concept of … Continue reading →

Download the lecture notes here: 11jan2008 Synopsis The foci of today’s lecture were as follows: unification – why is marrying gravity with gauge forces hard? particle worldlines versus string worldsheets; handwaving description of the quantum Casimir effect on string oscillations; … Continue reading →