"The past year has witnessed truly remarkable developments in our understanding of string theory. Fields, Strings and Duality - TASI 96 is an invaluable collection of review papers on the subject, contributed by the most prominent researchers in the field. This volume is a scientific treasure for graduate students, researchers and all others who are interested in the progress of theoretical physics."--Publisher's website

String theory is the leading candidate for a physical theory that combines all the fundamental forces of nature, as well as the principles of relativity and quantum mechanics, into a mathematically elegant whole. The mathematical tools used by string theorists are highly sophisticated, and cover many areas of mathematics. As with the birth of quantum theory in the early 20th century, the mathematics has benefited at least as much as the physics from the collaboration. In this book, based on CBMS lectures given at Texas Christian University, Rosenberg describes some of the most recent interplay between string dualities and topology and operator algebras. The book is an interdisciplinary approach to duality symmetries in string theory. It can be read by either mathematicians or theoretical physicists, and involves a more-or-less equal mixture of algebraic topology, operator algebras, and physics. There is also a bit of algebraic geometry, especially in the last chapter. The reader is assumed to be somewhat familiar with at least one of these four subjects, but not necessarily with all or even most of them. The main objective of the book is to show how several seemingly disparate subjects are closely linked with one another, and to give readers an overview of some areas of current research, even if this means that not everything is covered systematically.

This is the first systematic introduction to electromagnetic duality and its generalisations. The authors are the leading figures in this exciting new area of mathematical physics, and their lectures have been organised not only to link with each other but also to describe the fundamental ideas, the latest developments, and some earlier work whose significance has only recently become apparent. This will be essential reading for all those working in mathematical physics.

"This book is a testimony to the BIRS Workshop, and it covers a wide range of topics at the interface of number theory and string theory, with special emphasis on modular forms and string duality. They include the recent advances as well as introductory expositions on various aspects of modular forms, motives, differential equations, conformal field theory, topological strings and Gromov-Witten invariants, mirror symmetry, and homological mirror symmetry. The contributions are roughly divided into three categories: arithmetic and modular forms, geometric and differential equations, and physics and string theory. The book is suitable for researchers working at the interface of number theory and string theory."--BOOK JACKET.

"This book is a testimony to the BIRS Workshop, and it covers a wide range of topics at the interface of number theory and string theory, with special emphasis on modular forms and string duality. They include the recent advances as well as introductory expositions on various aspects of modular forms, motives, differential equations, conformal field theory, topological strings and Gromov-Witten invariants, mirror symmetry, and homological mirror symmetry. The contributions are roughly divided into three categories: arithmetic and modular forms, geometric and differential equations, and physics and string theory. The book is suitable for researchers working at the interface of number theory and string theory."--BOOK JACKET.

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.

La théorie de la gravitation d'Einstein ("relativité générale") est un des piliers de la physique moderne. Cette théorie a connu des développements spectaculaires ces dernières années, aussi bien sur le plan expérimental que sur le plan théorique. En particulier, la théorie des cordes, née il y a une quinzaine d'années, offre des perspectives remarquables d'unification de la force gravitationnelle aux autres forces fondamentales - réalisant ainsi un des vieux rêves d'Einstein. Cet ouvrage rassemble les contributions des experts mondiaux du domaine ayant participé au colloque Francqui qui s'est tenu sur ce thème à Bruxelles du 19 au 21 octobre 2001. Einstein theory of gravity is one of the pillars of modern physics. In the last years, this theory has undergone dramatic developments, both on the experimental and theoretical sides. In particular, string theory, which started in the last quarter of the XXth century, offers remarkable prospects to unify all the fundamental interactions - realizing thereby one of the Einstein's dreams. This book contains the contributions of the world leaders in the field who took part in the "Francqui conference" held on this theme in Brussels in October 2001.

This book is a pedagogical introduction to supergravity, a gravitational field theory that includes supersymmetry (symmetry between bosons and fermions) and is a generalization of Einstein's general relativity. Supergravity provides a low-energy effective theory of superstring theory, which has attracted much attention as a candidate for the unified theory of fundamental particles, and it is a useful tool for studying non-perturbative properties of superstring theory such as D-branes and string duality. This work considers classical supergravities in four and higher spacetime dimensions with their applications to superstring theory in mind. More concretely, it discusses classical Lagrangians (or field equations) and symmetry properties of supergravities. Besides local symmetries, supergravities often have global non-compact symmetries, which play a crucial role in their applications to superstring theory. One of the main features of this book is its detailed discussion of these non-compact symmetries. The aim of the book is twofold. One is to explain the basic ideas of supergravity to those who are not familiar with it. Toward that end, the discussions are made both pedagogical and concrete by stating equations explicitly. The other is to collect relevant formulae in one place so as to be useful for applications to string theory. The subjects discussed in this book include the vielbein formulation of gravity, supergravities in four dimensions, possible types of spinors in various dimensions, superalgebras and supermultiplets, non-linear sigma models for non-compact Lie groups, electric-magnetic duality symmetries, supergravities in higher dimensions, dimensional reductions, and gauged and massive supergravities.