Joseph Polchinski – författare

A groundbreaking theoretical physicist traces his career, reflecting on the successes and failures, triumphs and insecurities of a life cut short by cancer.The groundbreaking theoretical physicist Joseph Polchinski explained the genesis of his memoir this way: “Having only two bodies of knowledge, myself and physics, I decided to write an autobiography about my development as a theoretical physicist.” In this posthumously published account of his life and work, Polchinski (1954–2018) describes successes and failures, triumphs and insecurities, and the sheer persistence that led to his greatest discoveries. Writing engagingly and accessibly, with the wry humor for which he was known, Polchinski gives theoretical physics a very human face. Polchinski, famous for his contributions to string theory, may have changed the course of modern theoretical physics, but he was a late bloomer—doing most of his important work after the age of forty. His death from brain cancer at sixty-three cut short a career at its peak. Working on the memoir after his diagnosis, using a text-to-speech algorithm because he could no longer read words on a page, he was able to recapitulate his entire career, down to the details of problems he had worked on. For Polchinski, physics went deeper than words.  This edition includes photographs from Polchinski’s professional and family life, as well as physics explainer boxes, other technical edits, and bibliographic notes by his former student Ahmad Almheiri, a foreword by Andrew Strominger, and an afterword by his wife Dorothy Chun and sons Steven and Daniel.

String Theory comprises two volumes which give a comprehensive and pedagogic account of the subject. Volume 1, first published in 1998, provides a thorough introduction to the bosonic string. The first four chapters introduce the central ideas of string theory, the tools of conformal field theory and of the Polyakov path integral, and the covariant quantization of the string. The next three chapters treat string interactions: the general formalism, and detailed treatments of the tree level and one loop amplitudes. Chapter eight covers toroidal compactification and many important aspects of string physics, such as T-duality and D-branes. Chapter nine treats higher-order amplitudes, including an analysis of their finiteness and unitarity, and various nonperturbative ideas. An appendix giving a short course on path integral methods is included. This is an essential text and reference for graduate students and researchers interested in modern superstring theory.

String Theory, first published in 1998, comprises two volumes which provide a comprehensive and pedagogic account of the subject. Volume 2 begins with an introduction to supersymmetric string theories and presents the important advances of recent years. The first three chapters introduce the type I, type II, and heterototic superstring theories and their interactions. The next two chapters present important recent discoveries about strongly coupled strings, beginning with a detailed treatment of D-branes and their dynamics, and covering string duality, M-theory, and black hole entropy. The final chapters are concerned with four-dimensional string theories, showing how some of the simplest string models connect with previous ideas for unifying the Standard Model. They collect many important results on world-sheet and spacetime symmetries. An appendix summarizes the necessary background on fermions and supersymmetry. An essential text and reference for graduate students and researchers interested in superstring theory.

String Theory comprises two volumes which give a comprehensive and pedagogic account of the subject. Volume 1, first published in 1998, provides a thorough introduction to the bosonic string. The first four chapters introduce the central ideas of string theory, the tools of conformal field theory and of the Polyakov path integral, and the covariant quantization of the string. The next three chapters treat string interactions: the general formalism, and detailed treatments of the tree level and one loop amplitudes. Chapter eight covers toroidal compactification and many important aspects of string physics, such as T-duality and D-branes. Chapter nine treats higher-order amplitudes, including an analysis of their finiteness and unitarity, and various nonperturbative ideas. An appendix giving a short course on path integral methods is included. This is an essential text and reference for graduate students and researchers interested in modern superstring theory.

String Theory, first published in 1998, comprises two volumes which provide a comprehensive and pedagogic account of the subject. Volume 2 begins with an introduction to supersymmetric string theories and presents the important advances of recent years. The first three chapters introduce the type I, type II, and heterototic superstring theories and their interactions. The next two chapters present important recent discoveries about strongly coupled strings, beginning with a detailed treatment of D-branes and their dynamics, and covering string duality, M-theory, and black hole entropy. The final chapters are concerned with four-dimensional string theories, showing how some of the simplest string models connect with previous ideas for unifying the Standard Model. They collect many important results on world-sheet and spacetime symmetries. An appendix summarizes the necessary background on fermions and supersymmetry. An essential text and reference for graduate students and researchers interested in superstring theory.

This volume is a compilation of lectures delivered at the TASI 2015 summer school, "New Frontiers in Fields and Strings", held at the University of Colorado Boulder in June 2015. The school focused on topics in theoretical physics of interest to contemporary researchers in quantum field theory and string theory. The lectures are accessible to graduate students in the initial stages of their research careers.

Presents the proceedings of TASI 92. Contributors discuss areas including: new rules for perturbative gauge theories; critical strings; topological field theory; nonperturbative Baryon number violation; and string compactification.