Strings and Fundamental Physics

Book excerpt: The basic idea, simple and revolutionary at the same time, to replace the concept of a point particle with a one-dimensional string, has opened up a whole new field of research. Even today, four decades later, its multifaceted consequences are still not fully conceivable. Up to now string theory has offered a new way to view each particle: as different excitations of the same fundamental object. It has celebrated success in discovering the graviton in its spectrum, and it has naturally led scientists to posit space-times with more than four dimensions—which in turn has triggered numerous interesting developments in fields as varied as condensed matter physics and pure mathematics. This book collects pedagogical lectures by leading experts in string theory, introducing the non-specialist reader to some of the newest developments in the field. The carefully selected topics are at the cutting edge of research in string theory and include new developments in topological strings, or AdS/CFT dualities, as well as newly emerging subfields such as doubled field theory and holography in the hydrodynamic regime. The contributions to this book have been selected and arranged in such a way as to form a self-contained, graduate level textbook.