Introduction to String Theory; M423;

Instructor: Alon Faraggi; TP120;
       Phone: 0151 794 3774;
       Email: faraggi@amtp.liv.ac.uk

Lectures:
Monday 15:00 Room 211 Math Building.
Wednesday 10:00 Room 514 Math Building.
Thursday 14:00 Room 106 Math Building.
Thursday 15:00 Room 106 Math building.

Office hours: Mon 14:00; Wed; 09:00

webpage: http://www.maths.liv.ac.uk/TheorPhys/people/staff/faraggi/teaching/str/stcourse12.html

Lecture notes

These are the lecture notes of the module "Introduction to String Theory". Below these notes are the lecture notes of the module "Introduction to Modern Particle Physics".

Lectures week 1

Lectures week 2

Lectures week 3 and week 4

Lectures week 5 and week 6

Lectures week 7 and week 8

Lectures week 9 and week 10

Modern Particle Physics lecture notes pages 4 - 60

Modern Particle Physics lecture notes pages 61 - 137

Problem sets

H.W. set 1 sols set 1

H.W. set 2 sols set 2

H.W. set 3 sols set 3

H.W. set 4 sols set 4

H.W. set 5 sols set 5

H.W. set 6 sols set 6

H.W. set 7 sols set 7

H.W. set 8 sols set 8

H.W. set 9 sols set 9

H.W. set 10 sols set 10

Past exams

January 2011 Exam January 2011 solutions

Course Description

I. General outline:

The course aim is introduction to string theory.

Assessment:   The grade will be based on: final exam 90%; HW 10%; All problems in the exam are HW style problems.

II. Syllabus:

1. The road to string unification

2. Special relativity and higher dimensions

3. Electromagnestism in various dimensions

4. The nonrelativistic strings

5. The relativistic point particle

6. The classical relativistic string

7. The Polyakov action

8. World-sheet currents

9. Solutions of the open and closed string equations of motion

10. The quantum harmonic oscillator

11. The relativistic quantum open and closed string

12. The light-cone relativistic string

13. Covariant and light-cone quantization

14. T-duality of closed string

III. References

The main reference for this course is: A First Course in String Theory by Barton Zwiebach

Additional refences include:

String theory by Dieter Lust and Stefan Thiesen
Superstring theory by Michael Green, John Schwarz and Edward Witten
String theory and M-theory by Katherin Becker, Melanie Becker and John Schwarz