Basic concepts of string theory (Q411965)

The book under review is a revision of the previous book of the second and the third author [Lectures on string theory. Berlin etc.: Springer Verlag (1989; Zbl 0716.53063)]. The length of this new version is more than twice of the previous one. The purpose of this new edition is the same as the first one: to prepare the reader for research in string theory. It is intended as a textbook in the sense that, starting from the basics, the material is presented in a pedagogical and self-contained fashion. To make the book a pedagogical introduction, the authors had to make a selection of topics. The emphasis is on the world-sheet perspective of closed strings and of open strings ending on D-branes, where two-dimensional conformal field theory is the main tool. Compactifications of string theory, with and without fluxes, and string dualities are also discussed from the spacetime point of view, i.e., in geometric language. The major omissions are black holes in string theory, strings at finite temperature, string cosmology, anomalies in string theory, model building, matrix model description of M-theory, string field theory, to name a few. The influence of the classical string monographs by Green, Schwarz, Witten, and Polchinski can be felt throughout most chapters.