出版时间:2004-11 出版社:北京世图 作者:Joseph Polchinski 页数:402
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内容概要
When I first decided to write a book on string theory, more than ten years ago, my memories of my student years were much more vivid than they are today. Still, I remember that one of the greatest pleasures was finding a text that made a difficult subject accessible, and I hoped to provide the same for string theory. Thus, my first purpose was to give a coherent introduction to string theory, based on the Polyakov path integral and conformal field theory. No previous knowledge of string theory is assumed. I do assume that the reader is familiar with the central ideas of general relativity, such as metrics and curvature, and with the ideas of quantum field theory through non- Abelian gauge symmetry. Originally a full course of quantum field theory was assumed as a prerequisite, but it became clear that many students were eager to learn string theory as soon as possible, and that others had taken courses on quantum field theory that did not emphasize the tools needed for string theory. I have therefore tried to give a self-contained introduction to those tools. A second purpose was to show how some of the simplest four- dimensional string theories connect with previous ideas for unifying the Standard Model, and to collect general results on the physics of four- dimensional string theories as derived from world-sheet and spacetime symmetries. New developments have led to a third goal, which is to intro- duce the recent discoveries concerning string duality, M-theory, D-branes, and black hole entropy.
作者简介
Joseph Polchinski received his Ph.D.from the University of California at Berkeley in 1980. After postdoctoral fellowships at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Harvard, he Joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in 1984, moving to his present position of Professor of Physics at the University of Califrona at Santa barbara, and Permanent Member of the Institute for Theoretical Physics, in 1992.
书籍目录
Foreword Preface Notation 1 A first look at strings 1.1 Why strings? 1.2 Action principles 1.3 The open string spectrum 1.4 Closed and unoriented strings Exercises 2 Conformal field theory 2.1 Massless scalars in two dimensions 2.2 The operator product expansion 2.3 Ward identities and Noether's theorem 2.4 Conformal invariance 2.5 Free CFTs 2.6 The Virasoro algebra 2.7 Mode expansions 2.8 Vertex operators 2.9 More on states and operators Exercises 3 The polyakov path integral 3.1 Sums over world-sheets 3.2 The Polyakov path ingegral 3.3 Gauge fixing 3.4 The Weyl anomaly 3.5 Scattering amplitudes 3.6 Vertex operators 3.7 Strings in curved spacetime Exercises 4 The string spectrum 4.1 Old covariant quantization 4.2 BRST quantization 4.3 BRST quantization of the string 4.4 The no-ghost theorem Exercises 5 The string S-matrix 5.1 The circle and the torus 5.2 Moduli and Riemann surfaces 5.3 The measure for moduli 5.4 More about the measure Exercises 6 Tree-level amplitudes7 One-loop amplitudes8 Toroidal compactification and T-dualityAppendx A: A short course on path integralsReferencesGlossaryIndex
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