470 research outputs found
Physical law and the quest for mathematical understanding
The theoretical physics of the first quarter of the twentieth century -centering around relativity theory and nonrelativistic quantum mechanics-has had a broad influence mathematically. The main achievement of theoretical physics in the following half-century was the development of quantum field theory or QFT. Yet the mathematical influence of QFT still belongs largely to the 21st century, because its mathematical foundations are still not well-understood
Open Strings On The Rindler Horizon
It has been proposed that a certain Z_N orbifold, analytically continued in
N, can be used to describe the thermodynamics of Rindler space in string
theory. In this paper, we attempt to implement this idea for the open-string
sector. The most interesting result is that, although the orbifold is tachyonic
for positive integer N, the tachyon seems to disappear after analytic
continuation to the region that is appropriate for computing , where is the density matrix of Rindler space and Re
>1. Analytic continuation of the full orbifold conformal field
theory remains a challenge, but we find some evidence that if such analytic
continuation is possible, the resulting theory is a logarithmic conformal field
theory, necessarily nonunitary.Comment: 26 pp. Comment on dilaton tadpoles in higher order added in v. 3,
minor correction
Black holes and quark confinement
MOST expositions of string theory focus on its possible
use as a framework for unifying the forces of nature.
But I will take a different tack in this article. Rather
than the unification of the forces, I will here describe
what one might call the unification of the ideas
The Problem Of Gauge Theory
I sketch what it is supposed to mean to quantize gauge theory, and how this
can be made more concrete in perturbation theory and also by starting with a
finite-dimensional lattice approximation. Based on real experiments and
computer simulations, quantum gauge theory in four dimensions is believed to
have a mass gap. This is one of the most fundamental facts that makes the
Universe the way it is. This article is the written form of a lecture presented
at the conference "Geometric Analysis: Past and Future" (Harvard University,
August 27-September 1, 2008), in honor of the 60th birthday of S.-T. Yau
Parity Invariance For Strings In Twistor Space
Topological string theory with twistor space as the target makes visible some
otherwise difficult to see properties of perturbative Yang-Mills theory. But
left-right symmetry, which is obvious in the standard formalism, is highly
unclear from this point of view. Here we prove that tree diagrams computed from
connected -instanton configurations are parity-symmetric. The main point in
the proof also works for loop diagrams.Comment: 18 p
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