Graduate Texts in Contemporary Physics

This comprehensive tutorial introduces the development of, and current trends in, superstring theory, a significant and still controversial attempt to unify general relativity and quantum field theory. Intended for graduate students with a year of quantum mechanics and familiarity with relativistic methods, the book makes these exciting developments available to physicists, mathematicians, and others for the first time in one volume. Stressing current areas of research activity, Introduction to Superstrings addresses all relevant topics including string field theory, multi-loops and Teichmüller spaces, conformal field theory, and four-dimensional superstrings. Professor Kaku is currently leading seminars in superstring theory at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

"String theory (and its latest incarnation, M-theory) has advanced at an astonishing pace in the last decade, and this book aims to acquaint the reader with the most active topics of research in the field. Building on the foundations laid in his Introduction to Superstrings and M-Theory, Kaku discusses such topics as conformal field theory, knot theory, the Yang-Baxter relation, quantum groups, nonpolynomial string field theory, topological field theory, S-T-U dualities, D-branes, and M-theory. The book conveys the vitality of current research in string theory and M-theory and places the reader at its forefront."--BOOK JACKET.

Superstrings and M-theory are provocative and controversial, but unarguably among the most interesting and active areas of research in current physics. Called by some "the theory of everything," superstrings may solve a problem that has eluded physicists for the past 50 years, the final unification of the two great theories of the twentieth century, general relativity and quantum field theory. Now, here is a thoroughly revised, second edition of a course-tested comprehensive introductory graduate text on superstrings which stresses the most current areas of interest, not covered in other presentations, including four-dimensional superstrings, Kac-Moody algebras, Teichmuller spaces and Calabi-Yau manifolds, M-theory membranes and D-branes, duality and BPS relations, and matrix models. Prerequisites are an acquaintance with quantum mechanics and relativity.