Description
String theory is one of the most exciting and challenging areas of modern theoretical physics. This book guides the reader from the basics of string theory to recent developments. It introduces the basics of perturbative string theory, world-sheet supersymmetry, space-time supersymmetry, conformal field theory and the heterotic string, before describing modern developments, including D-branes, string dualities and M-theory. It then covers string geometry and flux compactifications, applications to cosmology and particle physics, black holes in string theory and M-theory, and the microscopic origin of black-hole entropy. It concludes with Matrix theory, the AdS/CFT duality and its generalizations. This book is ideal for graduate students and researchers in modern string theory, and will make an excellent textbook for a one-year course on string theory.
Elegantly written. This book will remain as the masterpiece in this field!
Admittedly im only 2 chapters in but its not as good a srednicki. Also I don’t like how more than half the material is presented through stand alone exercises rather than a more natural speech sort of flow….you know, like srednicki.
Maybe this is the result of having 3 authors, idk. It reads like a paper rather than a textbook.
It is the only serious string theory textbook I know of though so thank you BB&S for that.
If you want to stick to a single textbook ..this is the one to get !
It is quite up to date, extremely readable and didactic since it includes key solved exercises which a newcomer to the field needs to go over (seasoned String Theorists probably would skip over many of them ) .
If you are in need of a basic (yet quite comprehensive) S.T. Intro turn to the (affordable) McMahon DeMystified USER FRIENDLY book.
I think the “In a nutshell” and “Polchinski” books are very good too, but they expect the reader to work out way too many calcs on their own and they gloss over concepts and calcs that are only obvious to readers with a fair amount of String Theory background. Skipping those calcs can easily mislead the reader into thinking they understand the material …
It’s a Mystery why String theory has taken so long to evolve (about 50 years) and is still encountering serious difficulties (the latest one being the humongous number of available Vacuum states – “Landscape problem”)
Given the large amount and the high caliber of String Theorists (including Nobel Prize winners) it would be reasonable to expect for the Physics community to delineate the capabilites, limitations and use of the theory …
Ich habe im Studium Stringtheorie gehört und schreibe gerade meine Masterarbeit in dem Bereich. Bisher hatte ich nur Polchinski und Zwiebach und da war das Buch hier eine kleine Offenbarung. Nicht falsch verstehen: Polchinski ist schon gut und es steht viel drin, aber das Buch von Becker, Becker und Schwarz ist nicht nur klarer und verständlicher geschrieben geschrieben (hätte ich z.B. die Kapitel über “moduli spaces” von Calabi-Yaus früher gelesen, hätte ich mir viel Zeit gespart) sondern im Gegensatz zu Polchinski werden auch “moderne” Themen wie flux compactification behandelt u.Ä.
– Sehr umfassend, vom bosonischen String über Superstrings und M-Theporie bis zu AdS/CFT
– Das Layout ist gut – sehr übersichtlich
– Viele Übungsaufgaben mit(!) Lösungen
The instructor of the 1-semester strings grad course I am taking uses this as the textbook. This book is a good company to a course for its conciseness and fast track to superstrings. However, I don’t recommend reading it for self-learning, as it skips a lot of details and subtleties. For self-learning purpose I recommend Polchinski Book 1 and then return to the chapter of this book on superstrings and beyond.