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In recent years, superstring theory has emerged as a promising approach to reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics and unifying the fundamental interactions. Problems that have seemed insuperable in previous approaches take on a totally new character in the context of superstring theory, and some of them have been overcome. Interest in the subject has greatly increased following a succession of exciting recent developments. This two-volume book attempts to meet the need for a systematic exposition of superstring theory and its applications accessible to as wide an audience as possible. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Classic Introduction
At one time volumes I and II of "Superstring theory" would have been essential reading for serious students of string theory. However, the way we think of string theory today is very different from the way it was formulated in these classic texts. The core is still the same, but the advent of D-branes, various dualities and M-theory have radically changed the way we see string theory. This is not to mention all the other progress in string theory such as the extensive work on black hole physics. Still this book should not be missed.

Volume I stands on its own as an excellent introduction to superstring theory. However, other than showing general relativity appears in the low energy limit of string theory, potential observable consequences are mainly put off until volume II. Most of the arguments for the physical relevance of string theory are based on self-consistency and finiteness.

Following a historical tour of the origins of string theory as a dual model, the main topic is introduced, string theory as a candidate for the quantum theory of gravity and providing a grand unified field theory. The obvious question, what makes a theory based on one-dimensional objects is better than one based on zero-dimensional objects, is thoughtfully considered. Several arguments are given. The first chapter closes out with an overview of string interactions.

Starting with the simple physical idea that the action of a string is the area of the worldsheet, the authors develop bosonic string theory. Different approaches to quantizing strings in flat spacetime are presented with two of the main results being the calculation of the critical dimension and the central change.

The flat spacetime calculations are generalized to a curved spacetime. The low energy effective action is derived, with the amazing result that in this limit string theory reproduces general relativity. Conformal invariance clearly plays an important role throughout this, but general conformal field theory is never explicitly developed. I would have liked to seen is a more explicit treatment of general conformal field theory, but that's a matter of personal taste. All this is done in less than 200 pages!

The book then moves on to cover superstring theory. From this point on bosonic and superstrings are considered in parallel where appropriate. It starts off adding fermions onto the worldsheet. This theory is quantized in an approach that parallels that of the bosonic string (operator expansion, light-cone gauge, BRST). It then moves on to show the connection of worldsheet supersymmetry to spacetime supersymmetry.

The types of superstrings developed are Type I, Type IIA, Type IIB and heterotic (with various gauge symmetries). As a side note on perspective, these are described as different string theories, but the advent of M-theory they are currently seen as different solutions to one theory.

The book wraps up with very through calculations of tree level scattering amplitudes.

Undoubtedly this is an excellent book. The only questions are, "How well does it hold up, is it still essential reading"? It definitely holds up very well. I consider it essential reading, however I think the point could be argued. I doubt anybody would argue that people specializing in string theory would profit by reading it.

Should still be required reading
Anyone interested in learning string theory could perhaps start with the current formulation involving D-branes and M theories. This is certainly possible and will lead one to the frontiers of research. However, it would not perhaps give one an appreciation of string theory that would be obtained by persuing a study that explains how it arose in the study of the strong interaction . This book, written by three giants in string theory, will give the reader such a study, and was the first book to appear on the subject. The book is a monograph, and not a textbook, since no exercises appear, but it could still serve as a reference and "required reading" for courses in string theory.

The learning of string theory can be a formidable undertaking for those who lack the mathematical background. Indeed, a proper understanding of string theory, not just a forma one, will require a solid understanding of algebraic and differential geometry, algebraic topology, and complex manifolds. There are many books on these subjects, but I do not know of one what will give the student of string theory an in-depth understanding of the relevant mathematics. These two volumes include two rather lengthy chapters on mathematics, one on differential geometry and the other on algebraic geometry. The mastery of these two chapter will give readers a formal understanding of the mathematics, and will allow them to perform calculations in string theory efficiently, but do not give the insight needed for extending its frontiers. There have been a few books published on string theory since these two volumes appeared, but they too fail in this regard (and some even admit to doing so). To gain the necessary insight into the mathematics will entail a very time-consuming search of the early literature and many face-to-face conversations with mathematicians. The "oral tradition" in mathematics is real and one must embed onself in it if a real, in-depth understanding of mathematics is sought.

The physics of string theory though is brought out with incredible skill by the authors, and the historical motivation given in the introduction is the finest in the literature. Now legendary, the origin of string theories in the dual models of the strong interaction is discussed in detail. The Veneziano model, as discussed in this part, has recently become important in purely mathematical contexts, as has most every other construction in string theory. The mathematical results that have arisen from string theory involves some of the most fascinating constructions in all of mathematics, and mathematicians interested in these will themselves be interested in perusing these volumes, but will of course find the approach mathematically non-rigorous.

Some of the other discussions that stand out in the book include: 1. The global aspects of the string world sheet and the origin of the moduli space, along with its connection to Teichmuller space. 2. The world-sheet supersymmetry and the origin of the integers 10 and 26 as being a critical dimension. In this discussion, the authors give valuable insight on a number of matters, one in particular being why the introduction of an anticommuting field mapping bosons to bosons and fermions to fermions does not violate the spin-statistics theorem. 3. The light-cone gauge quantization for superstrings. The authors show that the manifestly covariant formalism is equivalent to the light-cone formalism and is ghost-free in dimension 10. The light-cone gauge is used to quantize a covariant world-sheet action with space-time supersymmetry, with this being Lorentz invariant in dimension 10. This allows, as the authors explain in lucid detail, the unification of bosonic and fermionic strings in a single Fock space. 4. Current algebra on the string world sheet and its origin in the need for distributing charge throughout the string, rather than just at the ends. The origin of heterotic string theory is explained in this context.

Still the best
Why I still recommend this book rather than Polchinski's book isbecause this book presents more motivation andphysics of string theory.In the 90s, there was stringduality revolution, a side-effect of which is that stringtheoristsneglect experiments. ... Read more

Product Description
In recent years, superstring theory has emerged as a promising approach to reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics and unifying the fundamental interactions. Problems that have seemed insuperable in previous approaches take on a totally new character in the context of superstring theory, and some of them have been overcome. Interest in the subject has greatly increased following a succession of exciting recent developments. This two-volume book attempts to meet the need for a systematic exposition of superstring theory and its applications accessible to as wide an audience as possible. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A legendary text, by legends of the 'field'
This is a quintessential text for anyone who wishes to master the area of String Theory. I would say however it is not an introductory text but something one refers to after one has a rudimentary background in Quantum Field Theory as well as string theory; it is well written and contains a very thorough treatment of the modern knowledge we have about String Theory.

Extensive coverage of phenomenology
Volume I of "Superstring theory" presented the fundamentals of string theory. This book builds on those fundamentals and explores the possible observable consequences of string theory. The subtitle "Loop amplitudes, anomalies and phenomenology" provides a good high level view of the content.

While the first volume demonstrated that string theory gives general relativity in the low energy limit, this volume explores some of the possible string theory implications in particle physics and how six of ten dimensions get compactified leaving the familiar four spacetime dimensions.

The first two chapters cover one-loop diagrams in bosonic and superstring theories. The tone is similar to the tree level scattering amplitudes calculations done in volume I. The amplitudes are calculated for both open and closed strings (which of course must be included when you have open strings that interact), the important concepts of moduli space and orbifolds are introduced here. Among the interesting results for the bosonic string are an additional argument for D = 26 and the appearance of an ultraviolet cutoff for the cosmological constant.

Following this is a lucid discussion of anomaly cancellation in Type I theory and path integral methods. Anomaly cancellation in Type IIB theories is considered later in the book, the subject of anomalies reappears throughout the remainder of the book.

The phenomenology discussion starts by studying the low energy effective action. The supersymmetric gauge fields are examined for various string symmetry groups. The background in differential geometry needed to understand gauge theory, as expressed in the language of forms, is presented in an earlier chapter. The gauge fields that arise from compactification are treated in the next chapter, along with anomaly cancellation in four dimensions.

This is followed by a very good, albeit brief, chapter on algebraic geometry. This is obviously not a comprehensive introduction, it sticks to the aspects that are relevant for string theory, for example Calabi-Yau spaces and Hodge numbers. The final chapter uses this mathematical machinery to explore the consequences of geometry of the compactified space may have for particle physics in our four spacetime dimensions.

In my opinion this book holds up even better than volume I, no small feat, especially the latter parts of it. I think anyone specializing in string theory should still consider this required reading. If their emphasis is on string theory as a grand unified theory, or other implications of the low energy limits of string theory, then there's likely little doubt this is required reading. ... Read more

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Since Robert Oppenheimer called the first Shelter island conference in 1947 to consolidate the advances in theoretical physics made during the war and to chart a course for the development of a "pure" physics far removed from defense applications, physics appears once again to have reached a critical juncture. Shelter Island II held at that same remote inn off the Eastern tip of Long Island documents the proceedings of the 1983 Shelter Island Conference on Quantum Field Theory and the Fundamental Problems of Physics, calling for a new consolidation and consensus on the directions of future research.Shelter Island II brings together an international constellation of leading theoreticians, including some of the most intellectually vigorous of the younger physicists and almost all of the living participants in the first conference, a number of them now Nobel laureates. It provides a historical overview and recollections of the first conference, whose proceedings were never published, reviews the major developments in quantum field theory and cosmology over the subsequent 36 years, and identifies the most promising paths for future exploration. A number of the contributions present significant new results. Among the topics discussed are the new inflationary universe scenario, supersymmetry, "The Cosmological Constant Is Probably Zero" (Stephen Hawking), superunification and the seven-sphere, time as a dynamical variable, induced gravity, and an extensive and previously unpublished paper by Edward Witten on KaluzaKlein theories.The contributors are Stephen L. Adler, Hans Bethe, M. J. Duff, Murray Gell-Mann, Alan. Guth, Stephen W. Hawking, R. Jackiw, Toichiro Kinoshita, W E. Lamb, Jr., T D. Lee, A. D. Linde, R. E. Marshak, Y Nambu, K. Nishijima, John H. Schwarz, Silvan S. Schweber, I. M. Singer, Steven Weinberg, Victor Weisskopf, P. C. West, Edward Witten, and Bruno Zumino.Editors Jackiw, Khuri, Weinberg, and Witten are respectively affiliated with MIT, Rockefeller University, the University of Texas, and Princeton. ... Read more

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Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Edward Witten, Riazuddin, Michio Kaku, Leonard Susskind, Steven Weinberg, Faheem Hussain, Brian Greene, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Lisa Randall, Yoichiro Nambu, David Gross, Alexander Markovich Polyakov, Michael Green, Asad Naqvi, Dimitri Nanopoulos, Sylvester James Gates, Sunil Mukhi, Maria Spiropulu, Luboš Motl, Hirosi Ooguri, Ashoke Sen, Pierre Ramond, Hafeez Hoorani, Cumrun Vafa, Juan Martín Maldacena, Holger Bech Nielsen, Gary Gibbons, Erik Verlinde, Michael Duff, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Gabriele Veneziano, Igor Klebanov, Michael R. Douglas, Steven Gubser, Stephen Shenker, Shiraz Minwalla, Charles Thorn, John Henry Schwarz, Greg Moore, Joël Scherk, Curtis Callan, Louise Dolan, Joseph Lykken, Spenta R. Wadia, Rajesh Gopakumar, Andrew Strominger, Alexander Zamolodchikov, Jacques Distler, Joseph Polchinski, Horaţiu Năstase, Robert Leigh, Peter Goddard, Sergei Gukov, Shamit Kachru, Petr Hořava, Alexander Belavin, Massimo Porrati, Barton Zwiebach, Renata Kallosh, Alexei Zamolodchikov, Nathan Seiberg, Martin Rocek, Burt Ovrut, Sandip Trivedi, Herman Verlinde, Jeffrey A. Harvey, David Berenstein, Willy Fischler, Paul Townsend, Arvind Rajaraman, Daniel Friedan, Emil Martinec, Tamiaki Yoneya, André Neveu. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Dr. Prof. Riazuddin or (Riaz Uddin) (Urdu: ) (born November 10, 1930), is a renowned and prominent Pakistani theoretical physicist and an eminent scientist, specializing in high energy physics and nuclear physics. Dr. Riazuddin is considered one of the top theoretical physicist in Pakistan. Dr. Riazuddin is also a considered one of the pioneer of Pakistan's nuclear program. Riazuddin is also a pupil student of Nobel laureate in Physics Abdus Salam (late). He has worked for the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP),...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=22233947 ... Read more

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Chapters: Alexander Grothendieck, Paul Cohen, Atle Selberg, René Thom, Edward Witten, Enrico Bombieri, Alain Connes, John Milnor, William Thurston, Michael Atiyah, Lars Ahlfors, Stephen Smale, Heisuke Hironaka, Vladimir Voevodsky, Laurent Lafforgue, Maxim Kontsevich, Richard Borcherds, Grigori Perelman, Shing-Tung Yau, David Mumford, Terence Tao, Lars Hörmander, Jean-Pierre Serre, Grigory Margulis, Timothy Gowers, Simon Donaldson, Alan Baker, Laurent Schwartz, John G. Thompson, Vladimir Drinfel'd, Sergei Novikov, Pierre Deligne, Kunihiko Kodaira, Charles Fefferman, Michael Freedman, Daniel Quillen, Vaughan Jones, Wendelin Werner, Andrei Okounkov, Pierre-Louis Lions, Jesse Douglas, Jean Bourgain, Curtis T. Mcmullen, Efim Zelmanov, Gerd Faltings, Shigefumi Mori, Jean-Christophe Yoccoz, Klaus Roth. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 229. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Sir Michael Francis Atiyah, OM, FRS, FRSE (born 22 April 1929) is a British mathematician, and one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. He grew up in Sudan and Egypt, and spent most of his academic life at Oxford, Cambridge, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has been President of the Royal Society (19901995), Master of Trinity College, Cambridge (19901997), Chancellor of the University of Leicester (19952005), and President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (20052008). He is currently retired and an honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh. He has had many mathematical collaborations, in particular with Raoul Bott, Friedrich Hirzebruch and Isadore Singer, and his students include Graeme Segal, Nigel Hitchin and Simon Donaldson. With Hirzebruch he founded topological K-theory, a major tool in algebraic topology, that describes the ways in which high dimensional space...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=20698 ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In theoretical physics, the Weinberg?Witten theorem (WW), proved by Steven Weinberg and Edward Witten, states that no massless (composite or elementary) particles with spin j greater than one are consistent with any renormalizable Lorentz-invariant quantum field theory excluding only (nonrenormalizable) theories of gravity and supergravity. Weinberg and Witten consider the so-called emergent theories to be misguided. During the 80's, preon theories, technicolor and the like were very popular and some people were speculating that gravity might be an emergent phenomenon or that gluons might be composite. So, they came up with a no-go theorem that excludes, under very general assumptions, the hypothetical composite and emergent theories. Decades later new theories of emergent gravity are proposed and the mainstream high-energy physicists are still using this theorem to "debunk" such theories. Because most of these emergent theories aren't Lorentz covariant, the WW theorem doesn't apply. The violation of Lorentz covariance however leads to other problems. ... Read more

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Chapters: Edward Witten, Charles F. Hockett, Walter Gilbert, Sylvia Earle, Alan Watts, Roméo Dallaire, William Cohen, John Mearsheimer, Ivo H. Daalder, Jill Carroll, Roxanne Qualls, Marcello Ferrada-Noli, David Lewin, Jane M. Swift, Debra Winger, Martin Kramer, John C. Keegan, Tatiana Mamonova, Philip James Devries, Marilyn Waring, Christopher Meyer, Andrew White, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Walid Khalidi, Vali Nasr, Alfred O. C. Nier, Charles Ferster, Magnus B. Egerstedt, Ivan A. Getting, Donna Brazile, Nannerl O. Keohane, Chiang Yee, Virginia Spencer Carr, Jan Beneš, Bassam Tibi, Clark Pinnock, Suzy Becker, Bernd Heinrich, Keith Pavitt, John Miles Foley, Nirupama Rao, John W. Vogt, Jr., E. Digby Baltzell, Ari Puheloinen, Abigail Child, George H. Hitchings, Ray Huang, Michael Mousseau, Marta Lucía Ramírez, Loïc Wacquant, Eszter Hargittai, David Pingree, Kuniko Inoguchi, Herrlee Glessner Creel, Hugh David Politzer, Marvin Kalb, Joseph Mccartin, Brian Kelly, Victor Saul Navasky, Leon Wieseltier, David Reddaway, Robert Gallucci, Ron Fournier, Nawab Haider Naqvi, Nancy-Ann Deparle, Louis O. Coxe, Dagmar Herzog, Theodor Paleologu, Daphne Berdahl, Frank Bass, Nathan O. Hatch, Mark B. Wise, Hans-Joachim Bremermann, Peggy Levitt, Coleman Coker, Bennett Jones Sims, Kishore Mahbubani, Neil Gershenfeld, Katherine Freese, William Arkin, Dean Rader, Moshe Halbertal, Javier Suárez, William F. Schulz, Ruth Lawrence, Andrew Fois, Jean-Marc Coicaud, James Grier Miller, Piers Mackesy, Caroline Elkins, Chihchun Chi-Sun Lee, Malcolm Jeeves, William Foote Whyte, Debabrata Goswami, Samuel King Allison, Benjamin Ginsberg, Jeffrey Davidow, Gustav Hägglund, Michael Dobbs, John Dunn, Kevin K. Lehmann, Barry Nalebuff, Maliha Lodhi, Wallace H. Nutting, Leslie Goodman, Richard Miles, John A. Rogers, Toshikazu Kase, Les Browne, Deborah M. Gordon, Ewine Van Dishoeck, Seán Ó Faoláin, Giovanni Capoccia, Herbert Basser, Marc A. Kastner, C. Edwin Baker, Norman Naimar...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=202475 ... Read more

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Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Roger Penrose, Edward Witten, Murray Gell-Mann, John Archibald Wheeler, Stephen Hawking, Chen Ning Yang, Hermann Bondi, Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr., Victor Frederick Weisskopf, Hubert Reeves, Rudolf Mössbauer, Friedrich Hirzebruch, Michel Mayor, Markus Fierz, Albert Einstein Medal, Gustav Tammann. Excerpt:The Albert Einstein Medal is an award presented by the Albert Einstein Society in Bern . First given in 1979, the award is presented to people who have "rendered outstanding services" in connection with Albert Einstein each year. Recipients See also (online edition) Websites (URLs online) A hyperlinked version of this chapter is at This is a Chinese name ; the family name is Yang ( ) . Chen-Ning Franklin Yang Chen-Ning Franklin Yang (simplified Chinese : ; traditional Chinese : ; pinyin : Yáng Zhènníng) (born October 1, 1922) is a Chinese -American physicist who w... ... Read more

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Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Laurent Lafforgue, Laurent Schwartz, Jean-Pierre Serre, René Thom, Alexandre Grothendieck, Grigori Perelman, Edward Witten, Wendelin Werner, Alain Connes, Kunihiko Kodaira, Pierre-Louis Lions, Michael Atiyah, Atle Selberg, David Mumford, Simon Donaldson, Gregori Margulis, Sergueï Novikov, John Milnor, Jean-Christophe Yoccoz, Vladimir Drinfeld, Shing-Tung Yau, Maxime Kontsevitch, Andreï Okounkov, Richard Ewen Borcherds, Klaus Roth, Charles Fefferman, Stephen Smale, John Griggs Thompson, Vaughan Frederick Randal Jones, Pierre Deligne, Enrico Bombieri, Gerd Faltings, Heisuke Hironaka, Alan Baker, Lars Ahlfors, Paul Cohen, William Thurston, Lars Hörmander, Shigefumi Mori, Jean Bourgain, William Timothy Gowers, Efim Zelmanov, Vladimir Voevodsky, Jesse Douglas, Curtis T. Mcmullen, Daniel Quillen. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Alexandre Grothendieck est un mathématicien apatride, ayant passé la majorité de sa vie en France, né le 28 mars 1928 à Berlin (Allemagne). Lauréat de la médaille Fields en 1966, refondateur de la géométrie algébrique, il est considéré comme l'un des plus grands mathématiciens du siècle. Sacha Schapiro, son père, est un anarchiste militant né près de Bryansk, ville située en Ukraine peuplée de Juifs hassidim. Après avoir passé dix ans en prison pour sa participation à plusieurs soulèvements anti-tsaristes, il rejoint Berlin où il rencontre sa femme, Hanka Grothendieck, protestante hambourgeoise qui partage l'idéal anarchiste. Elle est alors mariée à Johannes Raddatz : le fils de Sacha et Hanka s'appelle tout d'abord Alexander Raddatz. Hanka divorce en 1929, Sacha reconnaît le petit Alexander mais n'épouse pas Hanka. Hanka et Sacha fréquentent les cercles radicaux. En 1933, la m...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

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Les achats comprennent une adhésion à l'essai gratuite au club de livres de l'éditeur, dans lequel vous pouvez choisir parmi plus d'un million d'ouvrages, sans frais. Le livre consiste d'articles Wikipedia sur : Edward Witten, David J. Gross, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Cumrun Vafa, Joseph Polchinski. Non illustré. Mises à jour gratuites en ligne. Extrait : Edward Witten (né le 26 juillet 1951) est un physicien mathématique américain, professeur de physique mathématique à l'Institute for Advanced Study de Princeton, dans le New Jersey. En 1987, il était considéré comme l'un des plus éminents physiciens vivants. Il effectue des recherches sur la théorie des supercordes. Il en est considéré comme l'un de ses plus importants participants, notamment grâce à l'élaboration de la théorie M, première théorie des cordes ouvrant un horizon mathématique non perturbatif. Il est élu associé étranger à l'Académie des sciences en 2000. Edward Witten est né dans une famille juive à Baltimore, dans le Maryland. Fils de Lorraine W. Witten et Louis Witten, un physicien spécialisé dans la gravitation et la relativité générale, Edward Witten a obtenu un diplôme universitaire d'histoire (avec une mineure en linguistique) à l'Université de Brandeis. Witten avait pour ambition de devenir journaliste politique, et a publié des articles dans The New Republic et The Nation. Il a fréquenté l'université de Wisconsin-Madison pendant un semestre dans une filière d'économie à forte dominante mathématique avant d'abandonner. Après cela, il a brièvement travaillé pour la campagne présidentielle de George McGovern, puis est retourné à l'université pour suivre des cours de mathématiques appliquées à Princeton, avant de changer de section et de passer avec David Gross un doctorat de physique en 1976. Il est actuellement professeur de physique mathématique à l'Institute for Advanced Study. Il est marié à Chiara Nappi, professeur de physique à l'Université de Princeton, et s...http://booksllc.net/?l=fr ... Read more

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Students appreciate the logical organization and thorough integration of real, descriptive chemistry with chemical principles.used good condition ... Read more

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Very Good!
The book I received through Amazon was in perfect shape and I appreciate that I didn't have to wait that long for the book to arrive to me. ... Read more

Product Description
Ideas from quantum field theory and string theory have had considerable impact on mathematics over the past 20 years. Advances in many different areas have been inspired by insights from physics.

In 1996-97 the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ) organized a special year-long program designed to teach mathematicians the basic physical ideas which underlie the mathematical applications. The purpose is eloquently stated in a letter written by Robert MacPherson: "The goal is to create and convey an understanding, in terms congenial to mathematicians, of some fundamental notions of physics ... [and to] develop the sort of intuition common among physicists for those who are used to thought processes stemming from geometry and algebra."

These volumes are a written record of the program. They contain notes from several long and many short courses covering various aspects of quantum field theory and perturbative string theory. The courses were given by leading physicists and the notes were written either by the speakers or by mathematicians who participated in the program. The book also includes problems and solutions worked out by the editors and other leading participants. Interspersed are mathematical texts with background material and commentary on some topics covered in the lectures.These two volumes present the first truly comprehensive introduction to this field aimed at a mathematics audience. They offer a unique opportunity for mathematicians and mathematical physicists to learn about the beautiful and difficult subjects of quantum field theory and string theory. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Amazingly different!
If you are a mathematician and want to know what QFT and string theory (ST) are about, or if you are a string theorist, but want to know more about the mathematics behind the theory, then this book is what you are looking for. This book is totally different than any other standard textbook on QFT or ST. Mathematicians will love the fact that it is written in a language that is (close to) theirs, and physicists will enjoy it (provided they have a more solid background in mathematics than the average practical physicists), because it shows QFT and ST from completely "new" angles.

The book is a collection of lectures given by the various contributors, which fit together perfectly . The first volume has a very good overview of concepts and definitions at the very beginning and serves as a more mathematically oriented introductory treatment of SUSY and QFT with many advanced topics near the end. The second volume starts with an axiomatic approach of CFT and its use in string theory and then quantises strings with the BRST method (on a more mathematical level than usual), which is done superbly.

It's a great reference, a wonderful textbook and a true delicacy in modern mathematical physics. A MUST HAVE for every mathematically inclined physicst or any mathematician with interests in physics! Great value for money...

Lots to learn...
These articles are great. They do well in delineating theconceptual and rigorous frameworksof the subjects.

Included are exercises (and solutions)culminating from the problem sessions held at Quantum Field Theory program at IAS.

Physicists interested in the mathematical aspects of quantum field/string theory would do well to read these volumes as well.

Deserving, in my opinion, more than 5 stars -- many more!!

Definitely for mathematicians only
This book is an excellent compliation of articles written formathematicians who want to understand quantum field theory. It is notsurprising then that the articles are very formal and there is no attemptto give any physical intuition to the subject of quantum field theory. Thisdoes not mean however that aspiring physicists who want to specialize inquantum field theory should ont take a look at the contents. The twovolumes are worth reading, even if every article cannot be read because oftime constraints. All of the articles are written by the some of the majorplayers in the mathematics of quantum field theory.Volume 1 starts offwith a glossary of the terms used by physicists in quantum field theory andis nicely written. The next few hundred pages are devoted to supersymmetryand supermanifolds. A very abstract approach is given to these areas, withthe emphasis not on computation but on the structure of supermanifolds asthey would be studied mathematically. There is an article on classicalfield theory put in these pages, which is written by Pierre Deligne andDaniel Freed, and discussed in the framework of fiber bundles. Thediscussion of topological terms in the classical Lagrangian is especiallywell written. There is an introduction to smooth Deligne cohomology in thisarticle, and this is nice because of the difficulty in findingunderstandable literature on this subject.Part Two of Volume 1 isdevoted to the formal mathematical aspects of quantum field theory. After ashort introduction to canonical quantization, the Wightman approach isdiscussed in an article by David Kazhdan. Most refreshing is that statementof Kazhdan that the Wightman approach does not work for gauge fieldtheories. This article is packed with interesting insights, especially thesection on scattering theory, wherein Kazdan explains how the constructionsin scattering theory have no finite dimensional analogs. The article byWitten on the Dirac operator in finite dimensions is fascinating and a goodintroduction to how powerful concepts from quantum field theory can be usedto prove important results in mathematics. A fairly large collection ofproblems (with solutions) ends Volume 1.The first part of Volume 2 isdevoted entirely to the mathematics of string theory and conformal fieldtheory. The article by D'Hoker stands out as one that is especiallyreadable and informative. D. Gaitsgory has a well written article on vertexalgebras and defines in a very rigorous manner the constructions that occurin the subject. The last part of Volume 2 discusses the dynamics ofquantum field theory and uses as much mathematical rigor as possible. Onegets the impression that it this is the area where it is most difficult toproceed in an entirely rigorous way. Path integrals, not yet definedmathematically and used throughout the discussion. The best article inVolume 2, indeed of the entire two volumes is the one on N = 2 Yang-Millstheory in four dimensions. It is here that the most fascinatingconstructions in all of mathematics find their place.These two volumesare definitely worth having on one's shelf, and the price is veryreasonable considering the expertise of the authors and considering whatone will take away after reading them. ... Read more