General Prerequisites: Quantum Field Theory (MT)
Course Overview: 1 unit
16 lectures
Areas: PT
Sequels: String Theory II (TT)
Lecturer: Prof Xenia de la Ossa
Method of Assessment: Mini Project only, HT.
Course Synopsis: Historical background, Dolen-Horn-Schmid duality, the Veneziano and Virasoro-Shapiro amplitudes. Nambu-Goto and Polyakov world-sheet actions, equations of motion and constraints, open and closed strings and their corresponding boundary conditions. Old covariant quantization: the Virasoro algebra, physical state conditions, ghosts, critical spacetime dimension, and spacetime particle spectrum. Basic considerations of light-cone gauge quantization. Vertex operators and string scattering amplitudes. Strings in background fields, spacetime effective action. Circle compactification, elementary consideration of D-branes, T-duality.
