A First Course in String Theory

Barton Zwiebach is Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His central contributions have been in the area of string field theory, where he did the early work on the construction of the field theory of open strings and then developed the field theory of closed strings. He has also made important contributions to the subjects of D-branes with exceptional symmetry and tachyon condensation.

Foreword; Preface; Acknowledgements; Part I. Basics: 1. A brief introduction; 2. Special relativity and extra dimensions; 3. Electromagnetism and gravitation in various dimensions; 4. Nonrelativistic strings; 5. The relativistic point particle; 6. Relativistic strings; 7. Strong parameterization and classical motion; 8. World-sheet currents; 9. Light-cone relativistic strings; 10. Light-cone fields and particles; 11. The relativistic quantum point particle; 12, Relativistic quantum closed strings; 13. Relativistic quantum closed strings; 14. A look at relativistic superstrings; Part II. Developments: 15. D-branes and gauge fields; 16. String charge and electric charge; 17. T-duality of closed strings; 18. T-duality of open strings; 19. Electromagnetism fields in D-branes; 20. Nonlinear and Born-Infeld electrodynamics; 21. Strong theory and particle physics; 22. String thermodynamics and black holes; 23. Strong interactions and AdS/CFT; 24. Covariant string quantization; 25. String interactions and Riemann surfaces; 26. Loop amplitudes in string theory; References; Index.