Section: Lecture Notes | String Theory I (2025-26)

Lecturer: Profile: Xenia De La Ossa

Course information

General prerequisites:

Quantum Field Theory (MT)

Course term: Hilary

Course lecture information: 16 lectures

Course weight: 1

Course overview:

1 unit
16 lectures
Areas: PT
Sequels: String Theory II (TT)
Lecturer: Prof Xenia de la Ossa
Method of Assessment: Invigilated Written Exam

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.

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Section outline