I ts the 21st century!

Time to feed your mind

Basics
So what is string theory? For that matter, what the
heck are elementary particles? If this all sounds
totally confusing, try this section first.
Experiment
What progress are physicists making towards
experimental tests of string theory predictions?
Mathematics
What kinds of math do string theorists use and
why? And how has string theory changed
mathematics?
Black Holes
Personal safety issues aside, when black holes are
tied up in strings, they get even more interesting.
Cosmology
Was there a String Bang before the Big Bang, or
did the Universe simply unwind?
History
Find out how string theory outlasted the Vietnam
War, Mrs. Thatcher and grunge music, in our
Timeline section
People
So who are the people who work on string
theory? Check them out in our People section.
Theatre
Now playing in the String Theatre: a Real Audio
physics colloquium by Prof. John Schwarz.
Bookstore
Looking for books on string theory or other topics
in modern theoretical physics?
Blog
Discuss string theory and alternative theories of
quantum gravity in our new blog.


It all started when Isaac Newton invented calculus to describe the motions of falling objects and orbiting
planets... basic / advanced

Here are the past successes of theoretical physics, from electromagnetism to particle physics and general
relativity... basic / advanced

Why is it that the theory that works for describing gravity is so poorly compatible with the theory that
works for describing elementary particles?
basic / advanced

So what is string theory made of? How does a string theory differ from a particle theory? Get the scoop
here! basic / advanced

Let us count the ways... basic / advanced

What is the meaning of duality and what does this tell us about the relationships between string theories?
basic / advanced

If different string theories are related, then maybe they represent different limits of a bigger, more
fundamental theory... basic / advanced

Theoretical physicists today still use a core technology that was developed in the 18
th
century out of the
calculus pioneered by Isaac Newton and Gottfried von Leibniz.
Isaac Newton derived his three Laws of Motion through close, almost obsessive observation and
experimentation, as well as mathematical reasoning. The relationship he discovered between force and
acceleration, which he expressed in his own arcane notation of fluxions, has had the most impact on the
world in the differential notation used by his professional rival, Wilhelm von Leibniz, as the familiar
differential equation from freshman physics:
2
2
d x
F ma m
dt
= =
After Newton accused Leibniz of plagiarism in the discovery of calculus, Leibniz vastly more convenient
and intuitive differential and integral notation failed to become popular in England, and so the majority of
advances in the development of calculus in the next century took place in France and Germany.
At the University of Basel, the multitalented Leonhard Euler began to develop the calculus of variations
that was to become the most important tool in the tool kit of the theoretical physicist. The calculus of
variations was useful for finding curves that were the maximal or minimal length given some set of
conditions.
Joseph-Louis Lagrange took Eulers results and applied them to Newtonian mechanics. The general
principle that emerged from the work of Euler and Lagrange is now called the Principle of Least Action,
which could be called the core technology of modern theoretical physics.
In the Principal of Least Action, the differential equations of motion of a given physical system are
derived by minimizing the action of the system in question. For a finite system of objects, the action S is
an integral over time of a function called the Lagrange function or Lagrangian
( )
, L q dq dt , which
depends on the set of generalized coordinates and velocities
( )
, q dq dt of the system in question.
( )
,
f
i
t
t
S L q q dt =
}

The differential equations that describe the motion of the system are found by demanding that the action
be at its minimum (or maximum) value, where the functional differential of the action vanishes:
0 S o =
This condition gives rise to the Euler-Lagrange equations
0, 1,...,
n n
d L L
n N
dt q q
| | | |
| |
\ . \ .
c c
= =
c c

which, when applied to the Lagrangian of the system in question, gives the equations of motion for the
system.
As an example, take the system of a single massive particle with space coordinate x (in zero gravity). The
Lagrangian is just the kinetic energy, and the action is the energy integrated over time:
( )
2
1
,
2
L x x mx =
The Euler-Lagrange equations that minimize the action just reproduce Newtons equation of motion for a
free particle with no external forces:
( )
0
d L L d
mx
dt x x dt
| | | |
| |
\ . \ .
c c
= =
c c

The set of mathematical methods described above are collectively known as the Lagrangian formalism
of mechanics. In 1834, Dublin mathematician William Rowan Hamilton applied his work on
characteristic functions in optics to Newtonian mechanics, and what is now called the Hamiltonian
formalism of mechanics was born.
The idea that Hamilton borrowed from optics was the concept of a function whose value remains constant
along any path in the configuration space of the system, unless the final and initial points are varied. This
function in mechanics is now called the Hamiltonian and represents the total energy of the system. The
Hamiltonian formalism is related to the Lagrangian formalism by a transformation, called a Legendre
transformation, from coordinates and velocities
( )
, q dq dt to coordinates and momenta
( )
, q p :
1
,
N
n n n
n n
L
P H p q L
q
=
c
= =
c


The equations of motions are derived from the Hamiltonian through the Hamiltonian equivalent of the
Euler-Lagrange equations:
,
n n
n n
H H
p q
q p
c c
= =
c c

For a massive particle in zero gravity moving in one dimension, the Hamiltonian is just the kinetic
energy, which in terms of momentum, not velocity, is just:
2
2
p
H
m
=
If the coordinate q is just the position of the particle along the x axis then the equations of motion
become:
( )
, 0
p d
x p mx
m dt
= = =
which is equivalent to the answer derived from the Lagrangian formalism.
Classical mechanics would have had a brief history if only the motion of finite objects such as
cannonballs and planets could be studied. But the Lagrangian formalism and the method of differential
equations proved well adaptable to the study of continuous media, including the flows of fluids and
vibrations of continuous n-dimensional objects such as one-dimensional strings and two-dimensional
membranes.
The Lagrangian formalism is extended to continuous systems by the use of a Lagrangian density
integrated over time and the D-dimensional spatial volume of the system, instead of a Lagrange function
integrated just over time. The generalized coordinates q are now the fields q(x) distributed over space,
and we have made a transition from classical mechanics to classical field theory. The action is now
written:
( )
1
,
a D
a
q
S q x d x
x
+
| |
|
\ .
c
=
c
}
S
Here the coordinate
a
x refers to both time and space, and repetition implies a sum over all D + 1
dimensions of space and time.
For continuous media the Euler-Lagrange equations become
( )
0
a
a
x q q
o o
o o
| |
| |
|
|
|
\ .
\ .
c
=
c c
S S

with functional differentiation of the Lagrange density replacing ordinary differentiation of the Lagrange
function.
What is the meaning of the abstract symbol q(x)? This type of function in physics that depends on space
and time is called a field, and the physics of fields is called, of course, field theory.
The first important classical field theory was Newtons Law of Gravitation, where the gravitational force
between two particles of masses m
1
and m
2
can be written as:
12
12 1 2 12 1 2 12 12
12

, ,
r
F r x x r
N
G m m r
r
= = =
The gravitation force F can be seen as deriving from a gravitational field G, which if we set x
1
= 0 and x
2
= x, can be written as:
( )
2 1 2

, ,
r
F G r
N
k
m G k mG
r
= = =
Newtons Law of Gravitation was the beginning of classical field theory. But the greatest achievement of
classical field theory came 200 years later and gave birth to the modern era of telecommunications.
Physicists and mathematicians in the 19
th
century were intensely occupied with understanding electricity
and magnetism. In the late 19
th
century, James Clerk Maxwell found unified equations of motion of the
electric and magnetic fields, now known as Maxwells equations. The Maxwell equations in the absence
of any charges or currents are:
1
0
B
E E
c t
c
V = V =
c

1
0
E
B B
c t
c
V = V =
c

Maxwell discovered that there exist electromagnetic traveling wave solutions to these equations, which
can be rewritten as
2 2
2 2
2 2 2 2
1 1
,
B E
B E
c t c t
c c
V = V =
c c

and in 1873 he postulated that these electromagnetic waves solved the ongoing question as to the nature
of light.
The greatest year in classical field theory came in 1884 when Heinrich Hertz generated and studied the
first radio waves in his laboratory. Hertz confirmed Maxwells prediction and changed the world, and
physics, forever.
Maxwells theoretical unification of electricity and magnetism was engineered into the modern human
power to communicate across space at the speed of light. This was a stunning and powerful achievement
for theoretical physics, one that shaped the face of coming 20
th
century as the century of global
telecommunications.
But this was just the beginning. In the century that was just arriving, the power of theoretical physics
would grow to question the very nature of reality, space and time, and the technological consequences
would be even bigger.

The sense of achievement and closure for theoretical physics that came with the brilliant success of the
classical field theory of electromagnetism was short lived. The new technology invented out of the
mathematical unification of electricity with magnetism produced copious data about the nature of matter
and light that snapped all of the mathematical threads that physicists had just succeeded in tying down.
And after this new data was unraveled and understood and explained using mathematics, the unified
worldview of classical theoretical physics became split into two very different views of the universe -- the
particle view and the geometric view.
Particles and waves
The first sign of trouble was when J.J. Thomson discovered the electron in 1897. Experimentalists began
to see data that suggested a model of the atom with negatively charged particles orbiting around a
positively charged core. But according to Maxwells equations, such a system should be physically
unstable. Classical field theory was unable to explain or describe the emerging data on atomic structure.
Another big mystery that came out of Maxwells equations was the thermal behavior of light. Hot objects,
like a hot coal, glow by emitting light and that light is observed to consist of a distribution of waves of
different frequencies. But physicists who tried to explain the observed distribution of frequencies using
light waves as described by Maxwells equations met with continued failure.
Then as the new 20
th
century was beginning, a young German physicist, in an act of despair over the
gaps in the understanding of thermal radiation, made a guess called the Quantum Hypothesis, which
explained the observed thermal spectrum of light as coming from a collection of identical discrete quanta
of energy. His formula worked, but he didnt know why.
This was the beginning of the idea known as particle-wave duality, and the field of quantum
mechanics.
Einstein used Plancks idea to explain the newly-observed photoelectric effect. Einstein proposed that
light was emitted or absorbed by an excited electron in discrete quanta called photons whose energy was
proportional to the frequency of the light according to the relation
E hv = ,
where h is a number called Plancks constant, determined by measurement to be 6.6 x 10
-34
joule
seconds.
If a light wave could behave like a particle, then could a particle behave like a wave of some kind? In
1923, French aristocrat Louis de Broglie put forward the idea that an electron traveling with some
momentum p could act like a continuous wave with wavelength according to the relation
B
h
p
=
When the dust was settled, the new quantum theory described a given physical system not in terms of the
path of a particle or the strength of a field, but as the probability amplitude for a given system to be in a
given quantum state. This probability amplitude is the square of a function called the wave function
( )
, x t + , which is a solution to the Schrodinger equation
, H i
t
c+
+=
c

( )
( )
1 2
2
2 2 2
1 2
, , ,
2
N
x x x N
H V x x x
m
= V +V + +V +
Solutions to Schrdinger equation for more then one identical particle have an interesting symmetry. For
example, lets consider a two particle system and exchange the two particles. The wave function will
obey the relation
( ) ( )
1 2 2 1
, , x x x x + =+
In the plus case, the two particles are what we call bosons. Two bosons can occupy the same quantum
state at the same time.
In the minus case, the two particles are what we call fermions. Two fermions cannot occupy the same
quantum state at the same time. This effect is called Pauli repulsion, and Pauli repulsion explains the
structure of the periodic table of elements and the stability of atoms, and hence of all matter.
Relativity and geometry
The radical new idea of the quantum physics of atoms and light marked one direction of departure from
the comforting sureness of 19
th
century classical field theory. The other big surprise of the 20
th
century
came with the astounding observation in an experiment by Michelson and Morley that the speed of light
was independent of the motion of the observer.
Now normally one would think that is a person were capable of throwing a javelin at 5 miles per hour
while standing still, that same person, when running across the ground at 10 miles per hour, would be
capable of making the javelin travel across the ground at a speed of 15 miles per hour.
But according to the data from the Michelson-Morley experiment, if one uses a laser instead of a javelin,
then whether the person is sanding still or running 60 miles per hour or in a rocket traveling near the
speed of light - the light from the laser still travels the same speed!
This was an astounding result! How could it be explained using physics? Einstein came up with a
powerful, simple theory, called the Special Theory of Relativity. Einstein used the geometric notion of a
metric. The most familiar metric is just the Pythagorean Rule, which in three space dimensions in
differential form looks like
2 2 2 2
ds dx dy dz = + +
This formula has the special property that it is invariant under rotations. In other words, the length of a
straight line does not change when you rotate the line in space. In the Special Theory of Relativity the
idea of a metric is extended to include time, with a very crucial minus sign:
2 2 2 2 2 2
ds c dt dx dy dz = + + +
Like the space metric, the space-time is invariant under rotations in space. But now there is a new twist -
the space-time metric is also invariant under a kind of rotation of space and time called a Lorentz
transformation, and this transformation tells us how different observers who are moving with some
constant velocity relative to one another see the world.
And under a Lorentz transformation, the speed of light always stays the same, which is consistent with
the shocking Michelson-Morley experiment.
Einsteins next target of revision was Newtons Universal Law of Gravitation. In Newtons formula the
gravitational force
12
F between two planets of masses m
1
and m
2
as depending on the inverse square of
the distance
12
r between the planets
1 2
12 2
12
r
N
G mm
F =
N
G is called Newtons constant and is measured to be 6.7x10
-8
cm
3
/(gm sec
2
).
Newtons Law was extremely successful at explaining the observed motions of the planets around the
Sun, and of the moon around the Earth, and easily extendible through the techniques of classical field
theory to continuous systems.
However, there was no hint in Newtons theory as to how a gravitational field would change in time,
especially not in a manner that was consistent with the new understanding in Special Relativity that
nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
Einstein took a very bold step, and reached out to some radical new mathematics called non-Euclidean
geometry, where the Pythagorean rule is generalized to include metrics with coefficients that depend on
the space-time coordinates in the form
( )
2
ds g x dx dx
v
v
=
where repeated indices imply a sum over all space and time directions in the chosen coordinate system.
Einstein extended the idea of Lorentz invariance to general coordinate invariance, proposing that the
values of physical observables should be independent of a choice of coordinate system used to chart
points in space-time. He called this new theory the General Theory of Relativity.
In Einsteins new theory, space-time can have curvature, like the surface of a beach ball has curvature,
compared to the flat top of a table, which doesnt. The curvature is a function of the metric g
ab
and its first
and second derivatives. In the Einstein equation
1
8
2
N
R g R G T
v v v
t =
the space-time curvature (represented by R
v
and R) is determined by the total energy and momentum
T
v
of the stuff in the space-time like the planets, stars, radiation, interstellar dust and gas, black holes,
etc.
The Einstein equation is not strictly a departure from classical field theory, and the Einstein equation can
be derived as the solution to Euler-Lagrange equations that represent the stationary point, or extremum, of
the action
3
4
16
N
c
S R gd x
G t
=
}

Two views of the world
Using quantum mechanics, the typical questions that can be answered concern the types of quantum states
and allowed transitions in a system that features one or more particles that has some type of potential
energy represented by the potential
( )
V x . A typical method of working is to take some given
( )
V x and
use the Schrdinger equation find the wave function, the energies of the quantum states of the system, and
the allowed transitions between those states.
In general relativity, things are very different. One performs calculations that compute the evolution and
structure of an entire universe at a time. A typical way of working is to propose some particular collection
of energy and matter in the universe, to provide the T
v
. Given a particular T
v
, the Einstein equation
turns into a system of second order nonlinear differential equations whose solutions give us the metric of
space-time, g
v
, which holds all the information about the structure and evolution of a universe with that
given T
v
.
Given the difference in the fundamental questions and methodologies used in quantum mechanics and in
general relativity, it seems hardy surprising that uniting quantum physics with gravity, for a theory of
quantum gravity, would prove to be a very tough challenge.

Once special relativity was on firm observational and theoretical footing, it was appreciated that the
Schrdinger equation of quantum mechanics was not Lorentz invariant, therefore quantum mechanics as
it was so successfully developed in the 1920s was not a reliable description of nature when the system
contained particles that would move at or near the speed of light.
The problem is that the Schrdinger equation is first order in time derivatives but second order in spatial
derivatives. The Klein-Gordon equation is second order in both time and space and has solutions
representing particles with spin 0:
( )
2 2 2
0 m c

V V + u=
Dirac came up with square root of Klein-Gordon equation using matrices called gamma matrices, and
the solutions turned out to be particles of spin 1/2:
p
( )
0, mc p += p i


= = V
{ }
, 2
v v v v
q = + =
where the matrix
mn
h is the metric of flat space-time. But the problem with relativistic quantum
mechanics is that the solutions of the Dirac and Klein-Gordon equation have instabilities that turn out to
represent the creation and annihilation of virtual particles from essentially empty space.
Further understanding led to the development of relativistic quantum field theory, beginning with
quantum electrodynamics, or QED for short, pioneered by Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga in the
1940s. In quantum field theory, the behaviors and properties of elementary particles can calculated using
a series of diagrams, called Feynman diagrams, that properly account for the creation and annihilation of
virtual particles.
The set of the Feynman diagrams for the scattering of two electrons looks like
+ + + ...
The straight black lines represent electrons. The green wavy line represents a photon, or in classical
terms, the electromagnetic field between the two electrons that makes them repel one another. Each small
black loop represents a photon creating an electron and a positron, which then annihilate one another and
produce a photon, in what is called a virtual process. The full scattering amplitude is the sum of all
contributions from all possible loops of photons, electrons, positrons, and other available particles.
The quantum loop calculation comes with a very big problem. In order to properly account for all virtual
processes in the loops, one must integrate over all possible values of momentum, from zero momentum to
infinite momentum. But these loop integrals for an particle of spin J in D dimensions take the
approximate form
4 8 J D
loop
I p d p

}

If the quantity 4J + D 8 is negative, then the integral behaves fine for infinite momentum (or zero
wavelength, by the de Broglie relation.) If this quantity is zero or positive, then the integral takes an
infinite value, and the whole theory threatens to make no sense because the calculations just give infinite
answers.
The world that we see has D = 4, and the photon has spin J = 1. So for the case of electron-electron
scattering, these loop integrals can still take infinite values. But the integrals go to infinity very slowly,
like the logarithm of momentum, and it turns out that in this case, the theory can be renormalized so that
the infinities can be absorbed into a redefinition of a small number of parameters in the theory, such as
the mass and charge of the electron.
Quantum electrodynamics was a renormalizable theory, and by the 19402, this was regarded as a solved
relativistic quantum theory. But the other known particle forces - the weak nuclear force that makes
radioactivity, the strong nuclear force that hold neurons and protons together, and the gravitational force
that holds us on the earth - werent so quickly conquered by theoretical physics.
In the 1960s, particle physicists reached towards something called a dual resonance model in an attempt
to describe the strong nuclear force. The dual model was never that successful at describing particles, but
it was understood by 1970 that the dual models were actually quantum theories of relativistic vibrating
strings and displayed very intriguing mathematical behavior. Dual models came to be called string theory
as a result.
But in 1971, a new type of quantum field theory came on the scene that explained the weak nuclear force
by uniting it with electromagnetism into electroweak theory, and it was shown to be renormalizable. Then
similar wisdom was applied to the strong nuclear force to yield quantum chromodynamics, or QCD, and
this theory was also renormalizable.
Which left one force - gravity - that couldnt be turned into a renormalizable field theory no matter how
hard anyone tried. One big problem was that classical gravitational waves carry spin J = 2, so one should
assume that a graviton, the quantum particle that carries the gravitational force, has spin J = 2. But for J =
2, 4J 8 + D = D, and so for D = 4, the loop integral for the gravitational force would become infinite
like the fourth power of momentum, as the momentum in the loop became infinite.
And that was just hard cheese for particle physicists, and for many years the best people worked on
quantum gravity to no avail.
But the string theory that was once proposed for the strong interactions contained a massless particle with
spin J = 2.
In 1974 the question finally was asked: could string theory be a theory of quantum gravity?
The possible advantage of string theory is that the analog of a Feynman diagram in string theory is a two-
dimensional smooth surface, and the loop integrals over such a smooth surface lack the zero-distance,
infinite momentum problems of the integrals over particle loops.
In string theory infinite momentum does not even mean zero distance, because for strings, the relationship
between distance and momentum is roughly like
p
L
p
o' A +
The parameter a (pronounced alpha prime) is related to the string tension, the fundamental parameter of
string theory, by the relation
1
2
string
T
to
=
'

The above relation implies a minimum observable length for a quantum string theory of
min
2 L o'
The zero-distance behavior which is so problematic in quantum field theory becomes irrelevant in string
theories, and this makes string theory very attractive as a theory of quantum gravity.
If string theory is a theory of quantum gravity, then this minimum length scale should be at least the size
of the Planck length, which is the length scale made by the combination of Newtons constant, the speed
of light and Plancks constant
33
3
1.6 10
N
P
G
L cm
c

= =
although as we shall see later, the question of length scales in string theory is complicated by string
duality, which can relate two theories with seemingly different length scales.

Pythagoras could be called the first known string theorist. Pythagoras, an excellent lyre player, figured
out the first known string physics - the harmonic relationship. Pythagoras realized that vibrating Lyre
strings of equal tensions but different lengths would produce harmonious notes (i.e. middle C and high C)
if the ratio of the lengths of the two strings were a whole number.
Pythagoras discovered this by looking and listening. Today that information is more precisely encoded
into mathematics, namely the wave equation for a string with a tension T and a mass per unit length m. If
the string is described in coordinates as in the drawing below, where x is the distance along the string and
y is the height of the string, as the string oscillates in time t,

then the equation of motion is the one-dimensional wave equation
( ) ( ) ( )
2 2 2
2
2 2 2
, , ,
w
y x t y x t y x t
T
v
t x x
c c c
= =
c c c

where
w
v is the wave velocity along the string.
When solving the equations of motion, we need to know the boundary conditions of the string. Lets
suppose that the string is fixed at each end and has an unstretched length L. The general solution to this
equation can be written as a sum of normal modes, here labeled by the integer n, such that
( )
1
, cos sin sin
w w
n n
n
n v t n v t n x
y x t a b
L L L
t t t

=
| |
|
\ .
= +

The condition for a normal mode is that the wavelength be some integral fraction of twice the string
length, or
2
n
L
n
=
The frequency of the normal mode is then
2
w
n
nv
f
L
=
The normal modes are what we hear as notes. Notice that the string wave velocity
w
v increases as the
tension of the string is increased, and so the normal frequency of the string increases as well. This is why
a guitar string makes a higher note when it is tightened.
But thats for a nonrelativistic string, one with a wave velocity much smaller than the speed of light. How
do we write the equation for a relativistic string?
According to Einsteins theory, a relativistic equation has to use coordinates that have the proper Lorentz
transformation properties. But then we have a problem, because a string oscillates in space and time, and
as it oscillates, it sweeps out a two-dimensional surface in space-time that we call a world sheet
(compared with the world line of a particle).
In the nonrelativistic string, there was a clear difference between the space coordinate along the string,
and the time coordinate. But in a relativistic string theory, we wind up having to consider the world sheet
of the string as a two-dimensional space-time of its own, where the division between space and time
depends upon the observer.
The classical equation can be written as
( ) ( )
2 2
2
2 2
, , X X
c

o t o t
t o
c c
=
c c

where o and t are coordinates on the string world sheet representing space and time along the string,
and the parameter
2
c is the ratio of the string tension to the string mass per unit length.
These equations of motion can be derived from Euler-Lagrange equations from an action based on the
string world sheet
1
4
mn
m n
S d d hh X X

o t
to
= c c
'
}

The space-time coordinates
m
X of the string in this picture are also fields
m
X in a two-dimension field
theory defined on the surface that a string sweeps out as it travels in space. The partial derivatives are
with respect to the coordinates s and t on the world sheet and
mn
h is the two-dimensional metric defined
on the string world sheet.
The general solution to the relativistic string equations of motion looks very similar to the classical
nonrelativistic case above. The transverse space coordinates can be expanded in normal modes as
( )
0
,
1
2 cos sin cos
i i i
i
n
n
X x x
n c n c n
i i
n L L L
o t t
t t t t to
o o

=
| |
|
\ .
= + +
'

The string solution above is unlike a guitar string in that it isnt tied down at either end and so travels
freely through space-time as it oscillates. The string above is an open string, with ends that are floppy.
For a closed string, the boundary conditions are periodic, and the resulting oscillating solution looks like
two open string oscillations moving in the opposite direction around the string. These two types of closed
string modes are called right-movers and left-movers, and this difference will be important later in the
supersymmetric heterotic string theory.
This is classical string. When we add quantum mechanics by making the string momentum and position
obey quantum commutation relations, the oscillator mode coefficients have the commutation relations
,
m n m n
m
v v
o o o q
+
(

=
The quantized string oscillator modes wind up giving representations of the Poincar group, through
which quantum states of mass and spin are classified in a relativistic quantum field theory.
So this is where the elementary particle arise in string theory. Particles in a string theory are like the
harmonic notes played on a string with a fixed tension
1
2
string
T
to
=
'

The parameter o' is called the string parameter and the square root of this number represents the
approximate distance scale at which string effects should become observable.
In the generic quantum string theory, there are quantum states with negative norm, also known as ghosts.
This happens because of the minus sign in the space-time metric, which implies that
0 0
,
m n m n
m o o o
+
(

=
So there ends up being extra unphysical states in the string spectrum.
In 26 space-time dimensions, these extra unphysical states wind up disappearing from the spectrum.
Therefore bosonic string quantum mechanics is only consistent if the dimension of space-time is 26.
By looking at the quantum mechanics of the relativistic string normal modes, one can deduce that the
quantum modes of the string look just like the particles we see in space-time, with mass that depends on
the spin according to the formula
2
J
J M o' =
Remember that boundary conditions are important for string behavior. Strings can be open, with ends that
travel at the speed of light, or closed, with their ends joined in a ring.
One of the particle states of a closed string has zero mass and two units of spin, the same mass and spin as
a graviton, the particle that is supposed to be the carrier of the gravitational force.

The bosonic string world sheet action
1
4
mn
m n
S d d hh X X

o t
to
= c c
'
}

for a string propagating in flat 26-dimensional space-time with coordinates
( )
, X

o t can give rise to

four different quantum mechanically consistent string theories, depending on the choice of boundary
conditions used to solve the equations of motion. The choices are divided into two categories:
A. Are the strings open (with free ends) or closed (with ends joined together in a loop)?
B. Are the strings orientable (you can tell which direction youre traveling along the string) or
unorientable (you cant tell which direction youre traveling along the string)?
There are four different combinations of options, giving rise to the four bosonic string theories shown in
the table below. Notice in the table that open string theories also contain closed strings. Why is this?
Because an open string can sometimes join its two free ends and become a closed string and then break
apart again into an open string. In pure closed string theory, the analog of that process does not occur.
The bosonic string theories are all unstable because the lowest excitation mode, or the ground state, is a
tachyon with
2
1 M o' = . The massless particle spectrum always includes the graviton, so gravity is
always a part of any bosonic string theory. The vector boson is similar to the photon of electromagnetism
or the gauge fields of any Yang-Mills theory. The antisymmetric tensor field carries a force that is
difficult to describe in this short space. The strings act as a source of this field.
Bosonic strings, d = 26
Type Oriented? Details
Open (plus closed) Yes
Scalar tachyon, massless antisymmetric tensor, graviton and
dilaton
Open (plus closed) No Scalar tachyon, massless graviton and dilaton
Closed Yes
Scalar tachyon, massless vector boson, antisymmetric tensor,
graviton and dilaton
Closed No Scalar tachyon, massless graviton and dilaton
Its just as well that bosonic string theory is unstable, because its not a realistic theory to begin with. The
real world has stable matter made from fermions that satisfy the Pauli Exclusion Principle where two
identical particles cannot be in the same quantum state at the same time.
Adding fermions to string theory introduces a new set of negative norm states or ghosts, to add to the
ghost states that come from the bosonic sector described on the previous page. String theorists learned
that all of these bad ghost states decouple from the spectrum when two conditions are satisfied: the
number of space-time dimensions is 10, and theory is supersymmetric, so that there are equal numbers
of bosons and fermions in the spectrum.
Fermions have more complicated boundary conditions than bosons, so unraveling the different possible
consistent superstring theories took researchers quite a bit of doing. The simplest way to examine a
superstring theory is to go to what is called superspace. In superspace, in addition to the normal
commuting coordinates X

, a set of anticommuting coordinates

A
u are added. In superstring theories
index A runs from 1 to 2 (an additional spinor index is not shown). The anticommutation relations of the
coordinates are
0
A B A B
u u u u + =
The options of open vs closed, and oriented Vs unoriented boundary conditions are still present, but there
are also choices involving fermions that distinguish one superstring theory from another. The superspace
coordinates
1
u and
2
u behave like particles with spin 1/2 and zero mass, which can only spin two ways -
with the spin axis in the same or opposite direction as the momentum. This property is called handedness.
So
1
u and
2
u can have either the same or the opposite handedness.
The resulting consistent string theories can be described in terms of the massless particle spectrum and
the resulting number of space-time supersymmetry charges, denoted by the letter N in the table below.
None of the theories below suffer from the tachyon problem that plagues bosonic string theories. All of
the theories below contain gravity.
Superstrings, d = 10
Type
Open or
closed?
Oriented? N Details
I
Open (plus
closed)
No 1
Graviton, no tachyon, SO(32) gauge symmetry,
charges are attached to the ends of the strings
IIA Closed No 2
Graviton, no tachyon, only a U(1) gauge
symmetry
IIB Closed Yes 2 Graviton, no tachyon, no gauge symmetry
Heterotic E
8
XE
8
Closed Yes 1 Graviton, no tachyon, E
8
XE
8
gauge symmetry
Heterotic SO(32) Closed Yes 1 Graviton, no tachyon, SO(32) gauge symmetry
A supersymmetric theory has a fermionic partner for every bosonic particle. The superpartner of a
graviton is called a gravitino and has spin 3/2. All of the theories above contain gravitons and gravitinos.
For open superstrings, the choices turn out to be restricted by conditions too complicated to explain
here. It turns out that the only consistent theory has unoriented strings, with
1
u and
2
u having the same
handedness, with an SO(32) gauge symmetry included by attaching little charges to the ends of the open
string. These charges are called Chan Paton factors. The resulting theory is called Type I.
Closed string oscillations can be separated into modes that propagate around the string in different
directions, sometimes called left movers and right movers. If
1
u and
2
u have opposite handedness, then
they also have opposite momentum, and hence travel in opposite directions. Therefore they provide a way
to tell which direction one is traveling around the string. Therefore these strings are oriented. This is
called Type IIA superstring theory.
Because
1
u and
2
u have opposite handedness, this theory winds up being too symmetric for real life.
Every fermion has a partner of the opposite handedness, which is not what is observed in our world,
where the neutrino comes in a left-handed version but not a right-handed version. The real world seems to
be chiral, which means having a preferred handedness for massless fermions. But Type IIA superstring
theory is a nonchiral theory. There is also no way to add a gauge symmetry to Type IIA superstrings, so
here also the theory fails as a model of the real world.
If
1
u and
2
u have the same handedness, and the string is oriented, then we get Type IIB superstring
theory. This theory is chiral, and so there will be massless fermions that dont have partners of the
opposite handedness, as is observed in our world today. However, there is no way to add a gauge
symmetry to the Type IIB theory. So there isnt a way to include any of the known forces other than
gravity.
If
1
u and
2
u have the same handedness, but the string is unoriented, that turns out to just give the closed
string part of the Type I theory.
This seems to have exhausted all of the obvious options. But theres actually something crazy that can be
done with a closed string that yields two more important superstring theories.
The left-moving and right-moving modes of a string can be separated and treated as different theories. In
1984 it was realized that consistent string theories could be built by combining a bosonic string theory
moving in one direction along the string, with a supersymmetric string theory with a single
1
u moving in
the opposite direction. These theories are called heterotic superstring theories.
That sounds crazy - because bosonic strings live in 26 dimensions but supersymmetric string theories live
in 10 dimensions. But the extra 16 dimensions of the bosonic side of the theory arent really space-time
dimensions. Heterotic string theories are supersymmetric string theories living in ten space-time
dimensions.
The two types of heterotic theories that are possible come from the two types of gauge symmetry that
give rise to quantum mechanically consistent theories. The first is SO(32) and the second is the more
exotic combination called E
8
XE
8.
The E
8
XE
8
heterotic theory was previously regarded as the only string
theory that could give realistic physics, until the mid-1990s, when additional possibilities based on the
other theories were identified.

A new picture of string theory
At one time, string theorists believed there were five distinct superstring theories: type I, types IIA and
IIB, and heterotic SO(32) and E
8
XE
8
string theories. The thinking was that out of these five candidate
theories, only one was the actual correct Theory of Everything, and that theory was the theory whose
low energy limit, with ten dimensions space-time compactified down to four, matched the physics
observed in our world today. The other theories would be nothing more than rejected string theories,
mathematical constructs not blessed by Nature with existence.
But now it is known that this naive picture was wrong, and that the five superstring theories are
connected to one another as if they are each a special case of some more fundamental theory, of which
there is only one. In the mid-nineties it was learned that superstring theories are related by duality
transformations known as T duality and S duality. These dualities link the quantities of large and small
distance, and strong and weak coupling, limits that have always been identified as distinct limits of a
physical system in both classical and quantum physics. These duality relationships between string
theories have sparked a radical shift in our understanding of string theory, and have led to the reasonable
expectation that all five superstring theories - type I, types IIA and IIB, and heterotic SO(32) and E
8
XE
8

- are special limits of a more fundamental theory.
T duality
The duality symmetry that obscures our ability to distinguish between large and small distance scales is
called T-duality, and comes about from the compactification of extra space dimensions in a ten
dimensional superstring theory. Lets take the X
9
direction in flat ten-dimensional space-time, and
compactify it into a circle of radius R, so that
9 9
2 x x R t ~ +
A particle traveling around this circle will have its momentum quantized in integer multiples of 1/R, and a
particle in the n
th
quantized momentum state will contribute to the total mass squared of the particle as
2
2
2 n
n
m
R
=
A string can travel around the circle, too, and the contribution to the string mass squared is the same as
above.
But a closed string can also wrap around the circle, something a particle cannot do. The number of
times the string winds around the circle is called the winding number, denoted as w below, and w is also
quantized in integer units. Tension is energy per unit length, and the wrapped string has energy from
being stretched around the circular dimension. The winding contribution E
w
to the string energy is equal
to the string tension T
string
times the total length of the wrapped string, which is the circumference of the
circle multiplied by the number of times w that the string is wrapped around the circle.
1
, 2
2
string w string
wR
T E wRT t
to o
= = =
' '

where
2
s
L o' =
tells us the length scale L
s
of string theory.
The total mass squared for each mode of the closed string is
( )
2 2 2
2
2 2
2
2
n w R
m N
R o o
= + + +
' '

N N nw =
The integers N and are the number of oscillation modes excited on a closed string in the right-moving
and left-moving directions around the string.
The above formula is invariant under the exchange
, R n w
R
o'

In other words, we can exchange compactification radius R with radius R o' if we exchange the winding
modes with the quantized momentum modes.
This mode exchange is the basis of the duality known as T-duality. Notice that if the compactification
radius R is much smaller than the string scale L
s
, then the compactification radius after the winding and
momentum modes are exchanged is much larger than the string scale L
s
. So T-duality obscures the
difference between compactified dimensions that are much bigger than the string scale, and those that are
much smaller than the string scale.
T-duality relates type IIA superstring theory to type IIB superstring theory, and it relates heterotic
SO(32) superstring theory to heterotic E
8
XE
8
superstring theory. Notice that a duality relationship
between IIA and IIB theory is very unexpected, because type IIA theory has massless fermions of both
chiralities, making it a non-chiral theory, whereas type IIB theory is a chiral theory and has massless
fermions with only a single chirality.
T-duality is something unique to string physics. Its something point particles cannot do, because they
dont have winding modes. If string theory is a correct theory of Nature, then this implies that on some
deep level, the separation between large vs. small distance scales in physics is not a fixed separation but a
fluid one, dependent upon the type of probe we use to measure distance, and how we count the states of
the probe.
This sounds like it goes against all traditional physics, but this is indeed a reasonable outcome for a
quantum theory of gravity, because gravity comes from the metric tensor field that tells us the distances
between events in space-time.

Strong and weak coupling
What is a coupling constant? This is some number that tells us how strong an interaction is. Newtons
constant G
N
, which appears in both Newtons law of gravity and the Einstein equation, is the coupling
constant for gravitational interactions. For electromagnetism, the coupling constant is related to the
electric charge through the fine structure constant o
2
2
2 1
137
QED
e
g
hc
t
o = =
In both particle physics and string theory, usually the scattering amplitudes and other quantities have to
be computed as an expansion in powers of the coupling constant or loop expansion parameter, which
weve called g
2
below:
( )
2 2 4
0 1 2
A g A g A g A = + + +
At low energies in electromagnetism, the dimensionless coupling constant o is very small compared to
unity, and the higher powers in o become too small to matter. The first few terms in the series make a
good approximation to the real answer, which often cant be calculated at all because the mathematical
technology doesnt exist to solve the whole theory at once.
If the coupling constant gets very large compared to unity, perturbation theory becomes useless, because
higher powers of the expansion parameter are bigger, not smaller, than lower powers. This is called a
strongly coupled theory. Coupling constants in quantum field theory end up depending on energy
because of quantum vacuum effects. A quantum field theory can be weakly coupled at low energies and
strongly coupled at high energies, as is true with the fine structure constant o in QED, or strongly
coupled at low energies and weakly coupled at high energies, as is true with the coupling constant for
quark and gluon interactions in QCD.
Some quantities in a theory cannot be calculated at all using perturbation theory, especially not for weak
coupling. For example, the amplitude below cannot be expanded around the value g
2
= 0
( ) ( )
2 2
exp
NP
A g c g
because the amplitude is singular there. This is typical of a tunneling transition, which is forbidden by
energy conservation in classical physics and hence has no expansion around a classical limit.
String theories feature two kinds of perturbative expansions: an expansion in powers of the string
parameter o' in the conformal field theory on the two-dimensional string worldsheet, and a quantum
loop expansion for string scattering amplitudes in d-dimensional space-time. But unlike in particle
theories, the string quantum loop expansion parameter is not just a number, but depends on one of the
dynamic modes of the string, called the dilaton field
( )
x |
( ) 2
2
x
st
g e
|
=
This relationship between the dilaton and the string loop expansion parameter is important in
understanding the duality relation known as S-duality. S-duality can be examined most easily in type IIB
string theory, because this theory happens to be S-dual to itself. The low energy limit of type IIB theory
(meaning the lowest nontrivial order in the string parameter o' ) is a type IIB supergavity field theory,
which features a complex scalar field
( )
x whose real part is the axion field
( )
x _ and whose imaginary
part is the exponential of the dilaton field
( )
x | :
ie
|
_

= +
This field theory is invariant under a global transformation by the group SL(2, R) (broken by quantum
effects down to SL(2,Z)), with the field
( )
x transforming as
, 1
a b
ad bc
c d

+
=
+

If there is no contribution from the axion field, then the expectation value of the field
( )
x is given by
the dilaton alone. Because the dilaton is identified with g
st
, the SL(2, Z) transformation with b = -1, c = 1
st
i
g
=
1 1
st
st
g
g

tells us that the theory at coupling g
st
is the same as the theory at coupling 1/g
st
!
This transformation is called S-duality. If two string theories are related by S-duality, then one theory
with a strong coupling constant is the same as the other theory with weak coupling constant. Type IIB
superstring theory is S-dual to itself, so the strong and weak coupling limits are the same. This
duality allows an understanding of the strong coupling limit of the theory that would not be possible by
any other means.
Something more surprising is that type I superstring theory is S-dual to heterotic SO(32) superstring
theory. This is surprising because type I theories contain open and closed strings, where as heterotic
theories contain only open strings. Whats the explanation? At very strong coupling, heterotic SO(32)
string theory has excitations that are open strings, but these open strings are highly unstable in the weakly
coupled limit of the theory, which is the limit in which heterotic string theory is commonly understood.

More than just strings
To understand the presence of objects in string theory that are not strings, but higher dimensional
objects, or even points, it helps to know the formulation of Maxwells equations in the language of
differential forms, because this is what tells us that the sources of charge in the Maxwell equations
are zero-dimensional objects. Gauge field strengths that are p+2-forms turn out to have sources
that are p-dimensional objects. We call these p-branes.
In the regular Maxwell equations in d=4 space-time dimension, the electric and magentic fields are
packed together into the field strength F, which satisfies the equation F=dA, d is the exterior
derivative, and A is the vector potential, a one-form. The two-form*F is the dual of F relative to the
space-time volume four-form =.(The subscripts on F, etc., below are just to indicate the degree of
the differential form.)

The charge sources enter through the equation d*F=*J, where *J is the three-form dual to the
current four-vector J=(,j). In the rest frame of the charge density , J=(,0), so *J is times the
volume element for three-dimensional space. In a three-dimensional space, a surface that can be
localized in three dimensions (has codimension three) must be a zero-dimensional surface, also
known as a point.
This is the math that tells us that the Maxwell equations couple electrically to sources that are
points, or zero-branes, as zero-dimensional objects are now called in string theory. (For magnetic
couplings, the roles of F and *F are interchanged, but that wont be covered here.) This same math
works for two-forms in any space-time dimension, so we know that Maxwells equations couple to
point charges in any space-time dimension.
Superstring theories contain electromagnetism, but they also contain field strengths that are three-
forms, four-forms and on up. These field strengths obey equations just like the Maxwell equations,
and their sources can be analyzed in the same manner as above.
Suppose we start in d space-time dimensions with a vector potential A that is a p+1-form. Then F is
a p+2-form, = is a d-form (because its the volume element of d-dimensional space-time), *F is a
(d-p-2)-form, and d*F is a (d-p-1)-form. (Once again, the subscripts are just to indicate the degree
of the differential form.)

The equations of motion tell us that the source term *J is also a (d-p-1)-form. In the rest frame of
an isolated source, *J is proportional to a volume element of a (d-1-p)-dimensional subspace of (d-
1)-dimensional space. The codimension of the source is therefore (d-p-1), and since space has
dimension d-1, the charges that serve as sources must be objects with p dimensions, known asp-
branes. So a (p+2)-form field strength couples to sources that are p-branes. This little fact
has turned out to be extremely important in string theory.
Superstring theories are theories with gravity, so these p-dimensional localizations of charge must
lead to space-time curvature. A p-brane space-time whose metric solves the equations of motion for
a (p+2)-form field strength in d space-time dimensions can be described using p space coordinates
{y
i
} along the p-brane and (d-1-p) space coordinates {x
a
} orthogonal to the p-brane.

The isometries of this space-time consist of translations (shifting the coordinate by a constant) and
Lorentz transformations in the (p+1)-dimensional world volume, plus spatial rotations in the (d-1-
p)-dimensional space orthogonal to the p-brane.
Theres a problem with adding gravity, however. Most p-brane space-times turn out to be unstable.
Supersymmetry stabilizes p-branes, but only for the certain values of p and d. Two of the most
important p-branes in string theory are the two-brane in d=11 and the five-brane in d=10.
Since were talking about a space-time metric, were obviously in the low energy limit of string
theory. But p-branes can be protected from quantum corrections by supersymmetry, if they satisfy
an equality between mass and charge known as the BPS condition. These branes are then known
as BPS branes.

From p-branes to D-branes
A special class of p-branes in string theory are called D branes. Roughly speaking, a D brane is a p-
brane where the ends of open strings are localized on the brane.
D-branes were discovered by investigating T-duality for open strings. Open strings dont have
winding modes around compact dimensions, so one might think that open strings behave like
particles in the presence of circular dimensions. However, the stringiness of open strings in the
presence of compact dimensions exhibits itself in a more subtle manner, and the T-dual of an open
string theory is anything but uninteresting.
The normal open string boundary conditions in the string oscillator expansion comes from the
requirement that there be no momentum exiting or entering through the ends of an open string.
This translates into what are called Neumann boundary conditions at the ends of the string at
(o=0) and (o=t):

Suppose d-1-p of the space dimensions are compactified on a torus with radius R, and p of the
space dimensions are left noncompact as before. In the T-dual of this string theory, the boundary
conditions in those d-1-p directions are changed from Neumann to Dirichlet boundary conditions

This T-dual theory has strings with ends localized in d-1-p directions. So the T-dual of open strings
compactified on a torus of radius R is open strings with their ends fixed to static p-branes,
which we then call D-branes.
D branes have been very important in understanding string theory in general (see below) but also of
crucial importance in understanding black holes in string theory, especially in counting the quantum
states that lead to black hole entropy.
How many dimensions?
Before string theory won the full attention of the theoretical physics community, the most popular
unified theory was an eleven dimensional theory of supergravity, which is supersymmetry combined
with gravity. The eleven-dimensional space-time was to be compactified on a small 7-dimensional
sphere, leaving four space-time dimensions visible to observers at large distances.
This theory didnt work as a unified theory of particle physics, because an eleven-dimensional
quantum field theory based on point particles is not renormalizable. Also, chiral fermions cannot be
defined in space-time with an odd number of dimensions. But this eleven dimensional theory would
not die. It eventually came back to life in the strong coupling limit of superstring theory in ten
dimensions.
The theory currently known as M
Technically speaking, M theory is the unknown eleven-dimensional theory whose low energy limit is
the supergravity theory in eleven dimensions discussed above. However, many people have taken to
also using M theory to label the unknown theory believed to be the fundamental theory from which
the known superstring theories emerge as special limits.
We still dont know the fundamental M theory, but a lot has been learned about the eleven-
dimensional M theory and how it relates to superstrings in ten space-time dimensions.
Recall that one of the p-brane space-times that are stabilized by supersymmetry is a two-brane in
eleven space-time dimensions. This object is called the M2 brane for short.
Type IIA superstring theory has a stable one-brane solution called the fundamental string. If we
take M theory with the tenth space dimension compactified into a circle of radius R, and wrap one of
the dimensions of the M2 brane around that circle, then the result is the fundamental string of the
type IIA theory. When the M2 brane is not around that circle, then the result is the two-dimensional
D-brane, the D2 brane, of the type IIA theory.
If the two theories are identified, the type IIA coupling constant turns out to be proportional to the
radius R of the compactified tenth dimension in the M theory. So the weakly coupled limit of type IIA
superstring theory, which is the usual ten-dimensional theory, is also an expansion around small R.
The strong coupling limit of type IIA theory is where R becomes very large, and the extra dimension
of space-time is revealed. So type IIA superstring theory lives in ten space-time dimensions in the
weak coupling limit, but eleven space-time dimensions in the strongly coupled limit.
We still dont know what the fundamental theory behind string theory is, but judging from
all of these relationships, it must be a very interesting and rich theory, one where distance scales,
coupling strengths and even the number of dimensions in space-time are not fixed concepts but fluid
entities that shift with our point of view.

The language of physics is mathematics. In order to study physics seriously, one needs to learn
mathematics that took generations of brilliant people centuries to work out. Algebra, for
example, was cutting-edge mathematics when it was being developed in Baghdad in the 9th
century. But today its just the first step along the journey.
Algebra

Algebra provides the first exposure to the use of variables and constants, and experience
manipulating and solving linear equations of the form y = ax + b and quadratic equations
of the form y = ax
2
+bx+c.
Geometry

Geometry at this level is two-dimensional Euclidean geometry, Courses focus on learning to
reason geometrically, to use concepts like symmetry, similarity and congruence, to
understand the properties of geometric shapes in a flat, two-dimensional space.
Trigonometry

Trigonometry begins with the study of right triangles and the Pythagorean theorem. The
trigonometric functions sin, cos, tan and their inverses are introduced and clever identities
between them are explored.
Calculus (single variable)

Calculus begins with the definition of an abstract functions of a single variable, and
introduces the ordinary derivative of that function as the tangent to that curve at a given
point along the curve. Integration is derived from looking at the area under a curve, which
is then shown to be the inverse of differentiation.
Calculus (multivariable)

Multivariable calculus introduces functions of several variables f(x, y, z...), and students
learn to take partial and total derivatives. The ideas of directional derivative, integration
along a path and integration over a surface are developed in two and three dimensional
Euclidean space.
Analytic Geometry

Analytic geometry is the marriage of algebra with geometry. Geometric objects such as
conic sections, planes and spheres are studied by the means of algebraic equations.
Vectors in Cartesian, polar and spherical coordinates are introduced.
Linear Algebra

In linear algebra, students learn to solve systems of linear equations of the form a
i1
x
1
+ a
i2

x
2
+ ... + a
in
x
n
= c
i
and express them in terms of matrices and vectors. The properties of
abstract matrices, such as inverse, determinant, characteristic equation, and of certain
types of matrices, such as symmetric, antisymmetric, unitary or Hermitian, are explored.
Ordinary Differential Equations

This is where the physics begins! Much of physics is about deriving and solving differential
equations. The most important differential equation to learn, and the one most studied in
undergraduate physics, is the harmonic oscillator equation, ax + bx + cx = f(t), where x
means the time derivative of x(t).
Partial Differential Equations

For doing physics in more than one dimension, it becomes necessary to use partial
derivatives and hence partial differential equations. The first partial differential equations
students learn are the linear, separable ones that were derived and solved in the 18th and
19th centuries by people like Laplace, Green, Fourier, Legendre, and Bessel.
Methods of approximation

Most of the problems in physics cant be solved exactly in closed form. Therefore we have
to learn technology for making clever approximations, such as power series expansions,
saddle point integration, and small (or large) perturbations.
Probability and statistics

Probability became of major importance in physics when quantum mechanics entered the
scene. A course on probability begins by studying coin flips, and the counting of
distinguishable vs. indistinguishable objects. The concepts of mean and variance are
developed and applied in the cases of Poisson and Gaussian statistics.

Here are some of the topics in mathematics that a person who wants to learn advanced topics in
theoretical physics, especially string theory, should become familiar with.
Real analysis

In real analysis, students learn abstract properties of real functions as mappings,
isomorphism, fixed points, and basic topology such as sets, neighborhoods, invariants and
homeomorphisms.
Complex analysis

Complex analysis is an important foundation for learning string theory. Functions of a
complex variable, complex manifolds, holomorphic functions, harmonic forms, Khler
manifolds, Riemann surfaces and Teichmuller spaces are topics one needs to become
familiar with in order to study string theory.
Group theory

Modern particle physics could not have progressed without an understanding of symmetries
and group transformations. Group theory usually begins with the group of permutations on
N objects, and other finite groups. Concepts such as representations, irreducibility, classes
and characters.
Differential geometry

Einsteins General Theory of Relativity turned non-Euclidean geometry from a controversial
advance in mathematics into a component of graduate physics education. Differential
geometry begins with the study of differentiable manifolds, coordinate systems, vectors
and tensors. Students should learn about metrics and covariant derivatives, and how to
calculate curvature in coordinate and non-coordinate bases.
Lie groups

A Lie group is a group defined as a set of mappings on a differentiable manifold. Lie groups
have been especially important in modern physics. The study of Lie groups combines
techniques from group theory and basic differential geometry to develop the concepts of
Lie derivatives, Killing vectors, Lie algebras and matrix representations.
Differential forms

The mathematics of differential forms, developed by Elie Cartan at the beginning of the
20th century, has been powerful technology for understanding Hamiltonian dynamics,
relativity and gauge field theory. Students begin with antisymmetric tensors, then develop
the concepts of exterior product, exterior derivative, orientability, volume elements, and
integrability conditions.
Homology

Homology concerns regions and boundaries of spaces. For example, the boundary of a two-
dimensional circular disk is a one-dimensional circle. But a one-dimensional circle has no
edges, and hence no boundary. In homology this case is generalized to The boundary of a
boundary is zero. Students learn about simplexes, complexes, chains, and homology
groups.
Cohomology

Cohomology and homology are related, as one might suspect from the names. Cohomology
is the study of the relationship between closed and exact differential forms defined on some
manifold M. Students explore the generalization of Stokes theorem, de Rham cohomology,
the de Rahm complex, de Rahms theorem and cohomology groups.
Homotopy

Lightly speaking, homotopy is the study of the hole in the donut. Homotopy is important in
string theory because closed strings can wind around donut holes and get stuck, with
physical consequences. Students learn about paths and loops, homotopic maps of loops,
contractibility, the fundamental group, higher homotopy groups, and the Bott periodicity
theorem.
Fiber bundles

Fiber bundles comprise an area of mathematics that studies spaces defined on other spaces
through the use of a projection map of some kind. For example, in electromagnetism there
is a U(1) vector potential associated with every point of the space-time manifold. Therefore
one could study electromagnetism abstractly as a U(1) fiber bundle over some space-time
manifold M. Concepts developed include tangent bundles, principal bundles, Hopf maps,
covariant derivatives, curvature, and the connection to gauge field theories in physics.
Characteristic classes

The subject of characteristic classes applies cohomology to fiber bundles to understand the
barriers to untwisting a fiber bundle into what is known as a trivial bundle. This is useful
because it can reduce complex physical problems to math problems that are already
solved. The Chern class is particularly relevant to string theory.
Index theorems

In physics we are often interested in knowing about the space of zero eigenvalues of a
differential operator. The index of such an operator is related to the dimension of that
space of zero eigenvalues. The subject of index theorems and characteristic classes is
concerned with
Supersymmetry and supergravity

The mathematics behind supersymmetry starts with two concepts: graded Lie algebras,
and Grassmann numbers. A graded algebra is one that uses both commutation and anti-
commutation relations. Grassmann numbers are anti-commuting numbers, so that x times
y = y times x. The mathematical technology needed to work in supersymmetry includes
an understanding of graded Lie algebras, spinors in arbitrary space-time dimensions,
covariant derivatives of spinors, torsion, Killing spinors, and Grassmann multiplication,
derivation and integration, and Khler potentials.

These are topics in mathematics at the current cutting edge of superstring research.
K-theory
Cohomology is a powerful mathematical technology for classifying differential forms. In the
1960s, work by Sir Michael Atiyah, Isadore Singer, Alexandre Grothendieck, and Friedrich
Hirzebruch generalized coholomogy from differential forms to vector bundles, a subject that
is now known as K-theory.
Witten has argued that K-theory is relevant to string theory for classifying D-brane
charges. D-brane objects in string theory carry a type of charge called Ramond-Ramond
charge. Ramond-Ramond fields are differential forms, and their charges should be classified
by ordinary cohomology. But gauge fields propagate on D-branes, and gauge fields give
rise to vector bundles. This suggests that D-brane charge classification requires a
generalization of cohomology to vector bundles -- hence K-theory.
Overview of K-theory Applied to Strings by Edward Witten
D-branes and K-theory by Edward Witten
Noncommutative geometry (NCG for short)

Geometry was originally developed to describe physical space that we can see and
measure. After modern mathematics was freed from Euclids Fifth Axiom by Gauss and
Bolyai, Riemann added to modern geometry the abstract notion of a manifold M with points
that are labeled by local coordinates that are real numbers, with some metric tensor that
determines an extremal length between two points on the manifold.
Much of the progress in 20th century physics was in applying this modern notion of
geometry to space-time, or to quantum gauge field theory.
In the quest to develop a notion of quantum geometry, as far back as 1947, people were
trying to quantize space-time so that the coordinates would not be ordinary real numbers,
but somehow elevated to quantum operators obeying some nontrivial quantum
commutation relations. Hence the term noncommutative geometry, or NCG for short.
The current interest in NCG among physicists of the 21st century has been stimulated by
work by French mathematician Alain Connes.
Two Lectures on D-Geometry and Noncommutative Geometry by Michael R. Douglas
Noncommutative Geometry and Matrix Theory: Compactification on Tori by Alain Connes,
Michael R. Douglas, Albert Schwarz
String Theory and Noncommutative Geometry by Edward Witten and Nathan Seiberg.
Non-commutative spaces in physics and mathematics by Daniela Bigatti
Noncommutative Geometry for Pedestrians by J. Madore



Isaac Newton made a Bible-based estimate of a few thousand years. Einstein believed in a
steady state, ageless Universe. Since then, data collected from the Universe puts the
probable answer somewhere in the middle.
basic / advanced

The Einstein equation predicts several possible ways for the Universe to evolve in time and space.
What are these models and how do they compare with observation? basic / advanced


Take a tour through the chain of physical events that cosmologists believe occurred while
the expanding Universe we observe today was very small and very young.
Take the trip



Theres a lot of compelling evidence for the Big Bang, but what preceded it? The most accepted
model is called Inflation, but its not the kind of inflation that Alan Greenspan need fear.
basic / advanced


What happens when the early universe is gummed up with string? And are any of these scenarios
testable in the near future?
basic / advanced

First ingredient: quantum mechanics
In the early 20th century, it was realized that the stability of atomic matter could not be explained
using the Maxwell equations of classical electrodynamics. This triumph belonged to quantum
mechanics. The hydrogen atom was stable because the possible energy states of the electron
in the atom are quantized by the rule

where n is an integer, and is (approximately) the electron mass.
So when the electron changes energy for some reason, say by absorbing or emitting
electromagnetic radiation, it can only absorb or emit light of a wavelength corresponding to the
difference in quantized energy states of the electron. The collection of wavelengths of light emitted
by hydrogen gas is called the emission spectrum of hydrogen, and there is a corresponding
spectrum for absorption. One of the great successes of quantum mechanics was the calculation of
the wavelengths in the observed hydrogen spectrum.
Second ingredient: relativity
The other great revolution that started the 20th century was the space-time revolution of special
and general relativity. In special relativity, when a source of light of wavelength
em
is moving away
from an observer at some velocity v, the observer sees the light at some other wavelength
obs
,
determined by the principle that the speed of light is the same for all observers. The fractional
difference between
em
and
obs
is called the red shift, denoted by the letter z, and is computed
from the relative velocity v between the source and observer by

where c is the speed of light. If the source and observer are moving towards one another, the red
shift becomes a blue shift and is given is given by taking v -> -v in above.
Conclusion: the Universe is expanding
Stars are made mostly out of hydrogen and helium, and the emission spectrum of the hydrogen
atoms in a star in a far away galaxy ought to be the same as that of hydrogen atoms in a tube of
gas in a laboratory on Earth. But thats not what Edwin Hubble found when he compared the
emission spectra of different stars and galaxies. Hubble found that the emission wavelengths of the
hydrogen gas were red shifted by an amount proportional to their distance from our solar system.
Hubbles Law relates the red shift z to the distance D through

where the empirical constant H
0
is called Hubbles constant.
Hubbles observation suggested that the stars and galaxies in the Universe are hurtling away from
one another with a velocity that increases with distance, as if the whole Universe was expanding,
like in a big explosion. When physicists extrapolated that motion backwards in time, it suggested
that the Universe started out very hot and dense and somehow exploded into the huge cold place
that we see today. Hubbles Law was an empirical observation that demanded, and received, very
intense attention from modern theoretical physics after it was first proposed in 1924.
The equation of motion
When physicists want to study a given system, they turn to the equations of motion for that system.
According to the theory of general relativity, the correct equation of motion for describing a Universe
is the Einstein equation

relating the curvature of the space-time in a given Universe to the distribution of energy and
momentum in that Universe. The energy-momentum tensor T
v
includes all of the energy from all
nongravitational sources such as matter, electromagnetism or even quantum vacuum energy as we
shall see later.
The standard cosmological solution to the Einstein equation is written in the form of the Friedman-
Robertson-Walker metric

The function a(t) is called the scale factor, because it tells us the size of the Universe. The scale
factor a(t) and the constant k are both determined by the particular type of matter and/or radiation
present in the Universe. This will be described in the next section.
For any value of a(t) or k, the gravitational red shift z of light due to the changing size of the
Universe satisfies

where t
obs
is the time in the Universe that the light is being observed and t
em
is the time when the
light was first emitted.
The Hubble parameter H(t) gives the relative rate of change in the scale factor a(t) by

The observed Hubble constant is just the current value of the dynamically evolving Hubble
parameter. The uncertainties of the currently observed value of the Hubble constant have been
lumped into the parameter h
0
.
How old?
A quick approximation for the age of the Universe can be approximated by the inverse of the Hubble
constant. The calculated age turns out to be

Current best estimates of h
0
are

so the Universe is most likely somewhere between 12 and 16 billion years old, at least according
to this method of estimation.
But recall that according to relativity, time is relative. We can guess the amount of time likely to
have elapsed since the time when time was a meaningful quantity that could be measured. But we
cant say anything about any processes that might have occurred before the notion of time made
sense. In some sense, quantum gravity could be an eternal stage of the Universe, and the Big Bang
could be regarded as the end of eternity and the beginning of time itself.

The starting point of a theoretical exploration of cosmology is the Einstein equation

with a metric of the form

The space-time being modeled by this equation can be neatly separated into time and space, so we
can talk of this space-time as representing the evolution of space in time.
The space part of this space-time is homogeneous (looks the same at any point in a given direction)
and isotropic (looks the same in any direction from a given point). This is an abstract ideal
approximation to the Universe, but its one that has worked extremely well from an observational
point of view, as will be shown below.
There are three options for the spatial geometry of a space-time with the above metric, represented
by three choices for the value of the parameter k: k=1, k=0 or k=-1. The condition of being
spatially homogeneous and isotropic means that the surfaces of constant time t have constant
curvature, which can be either positive, zero or negative.

A sphere has constant
positive curvature.
A hyperboloid has constant
negative curvature.
To solve the Einstein equation, we need to postulate some stuff in the space-time, such as
matter, radiation or vacuum energy, with energy momentum tensor T
v
whose components are the
energy density and pressure p of the stuff in question. The equations for the scale factor a(t) are


Here we have truncated Newtons constant G
N
to plain G. The top equation contains the condition for
the closure density of the Universe explained below.
There are many different kinds of stuff that can be a part of the energy density , with different
equations of state relating to the pressure p. For bookkeeping purposes, lets label each different
by an index i, so that
i
refers to the energy density from the i
th
type of stuff in this space-time.
Lets also set something called the critical density
crit
and then make the above equation
dimensionless by dividing everything by the critical density:

Lets call O the density parameter. The equation that will tell us the curvature of space from the stuff
content of the space-time becomes

The three possibilities for the value of the parameter k correspond the three different possibilities for
the curvature of space in this space-time. A value of k=1 corresponds to constant positive
curvature, k=0 to zero curvature and k=-1 to constant negative curvature.
The time evolution of space is more complicated because it depends on the equation of state of the
stuff in space-time. The equation of state is the relationship between pressure and density in the
stuff. Energy conservation plus the equation of state determine how the energy density changes as
space evolves in time.
This is where vacuum energy becomes important. The energy densities for matter, radiation and
vacuum energy change with the size of space (the scale factor a(t)) like

So as the Universe is getting bigger, the energy density from matter and radiation would be getting
smaller, but vacuum energy density would remain the same. Another name for vacuum energy is
the cosmological constant. A cosmological constant eventually controls the time evolution of an
expanding universe, because its energy density stays the same while those of matter and radiation
are getting smaller.
In a space-time with all three forms of energy present, the radiation part of the mix will dominate
the dynamics when the scale factor a(t)<<1. In the Big Bang model this is called the radiation
dominated era, and accounted for the first 10,000-100,000 years of the evolution of our Universe.
Right now the dominant forms of energy in our Universe are matter and vacuum energy.
That being said, we will avoid dealing with any vacuum energy right now and consider a space-time
with only matter, with no radiation or cosmological constant. In this case, the time evolution of
space is related to the curvature of space as follows:
k W Topology Time Evolution
1 >1 Closed
Space is positively curved and finite,
expands from zero size to a maximum size
and then shrinks back to zero again
0 =1 Open
Space is flat and infinite, and expands
forever
-
1
<1 Open
Space is negatively curved and infinite,
and expands forever
If the amount of energy density in the space-time is over the critical density, so that O > 1, then
the fate of the Universe is to expand in a Big Bang but then eventually contract back into a Big
Crunch. Despite the fact that this would take place on a time scale of billions of years, humans today
find this possibility philosophically undesirable. More importantly, the data do not support it.
The visible matter in the Universe observed by humans today has barely a fraction of closure
density. In fact, the Universe as observed today seems to have barely a fraction of the mass needed
to keep galaxies from flying apart, based on the rotations of the stars in the galaxy about the
galactic center.
What keeps the galaxies from flying apart? It must be a lot of mass that we cant see. Which brings
us to the subject of dark matter.

Dark matter
Something becomes visible when it interacts with light in such a way
that we can see it. Astronomers studying the motions of stars in spiral
galaxies noticed that the mean star velocity did not drop off with
radius from the galactic center as rapidly as the falloff in luminous
mass in the galaxy dictated according to Newtonian gravity. The stars
far from the center were rotating too fast to be balanced by the gravitational force from the
luminous mass contained within that radius. This led to the proposition that most of the mass in a
galaxy was low luminosity mass of some kind, and this invisible mass was called dark matter.
Dark matter is probably not baryonic matter, because the abundance of primordial elements such as
hydrogen, helium and deuterium would be much higher if the Big Bang had produced enough baryon
density to account for the dark matter in galaxies.
The amount of dark matter present in the Universe has been estimated using various techniques,
including observing the velocities of galaxies in clusters and calculating the gravitational mass of
galactic clusters by their gravitational lensing effects on surrounding space-time. The end result is
that the baryonic density O
B
is about 5% and the dark matter density O
D
is about 30%
The leading candidate for dark matter right now comes from supersymmetry. Supersymmetric
versions of the Standard Model of elementary particle physics contain heavy supersymmetric
partners of the electroweak gauge bosons and the Higgs field that are electrically neutral and hence
dont interact with electromagnetic radiation, aka light. These neutralinos, as they are called, are
fermionic partners of the neutral gauge bosons and the Higgs field. They would have high mass, yet
interact very weakly, and those two qualities make them a good candidate for dark matter.
The Cosmological Constant
The observational evidence that the Universe was expanding didnt come around until 1929, which
was 14 years after the Einsteins General Theory of Relativity was first published. The Einstein
equations predicted an expanding Universe for any kind of ordinary matter or radiation in existence.
There being no evidence yet to make people believe that the expanding solutions to the Einstein
equations represented observed physics, Einstein postulated a new kind of energy density that could
balance the matter density in the Universe and prevent the Universe from expanding. This new
theoretical energy density is called the cosmological constant, known by the symbol A. The
energy density and pressure for A are

The Einstein equations with a matter density
m
and cosmological constant A become


A static solution has a(t) = constant = a
0
, which means that k=+1 and the matter density,
cosmological constant A
0
and scale factor are related by

A cosmological constant alters the time evolution that is associated with a given spatial curvature.
The k=+1 space-time with only matter expands and then recollapses, but the k=+1 space-time with
matter and a cosmological constant can either expand forever (for A > A
0
), stay the same forever (A
= A
0
) or expand and recontracts (0 < A < A
0
).
If A > 0 and k= 0 or -1, then space expands forever. If A < 0, then k=-1. When k=-1 with matter
and no cosmological constant, the Universe is open and expands forever. But for A < 0, even though
k=1 and the topology of space is open, this space-time expands and then recontracts like the k=+1
model with matter and no cosmological constant.
Whats the final answer?
1. Our Universe is pretty flat: The cosmic microwave background is the relic of Big Bang thermal
radiation, cooled to the temperature of 2.73 Kelvin. But it didnt cool perfectly smoothly, and after
the radiation cooled, there were some lumps left over. The angular size of those lumps as observed
from our present location in space-time depends on the spatial curvature of the Universe. The
currently observed lumpiness in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background is just right
for a flat Universe that expands forever.
2. There is a cosmological constant: There is a vacuum energy, or something that acts just like
one, to make the Universe accelerate in time. The acceleration of the Universe can be seen in the
redshifts of distant supernovae.
3. Most of the matter in the Universe is dark matter: Studies of galactic motion show that
ordinary visible matter in stars, galaxies, planets, and interstellar gas only makes up a small fraction
of the total energy density of the Universe.
The Universe at our current epoch has (approximately)

So right now the density of vacuum energy in our Universe is only about twice as large as the
energy density from dark matter, with the contribution from visible baryonic matter almost
negligible. The total adds up to a flat universe which should expand forever.

As far as we can tell, the expansion of the Universe started many billions of years ago from a very
hot, very small state. From that hot, small state, it mushroomed and evolved into the
Universe we know today. Cosmologists call that process of expansion the Big Bang because
at some phases, especially in the beginning, the process was rather like an explosion.
Much of understanding the Big Bang is extrapolating between knowledge of particle physics
today, and projections from the mathematical model of an expanding universe in general
relativity. The Einstein equations give us a mathematical model for describing how fast the
Universe would expanding at what size and time, given the energy density of matter and
radiation at that time. We base our guesses about the matter and radiation density of the
early Universe based on the ancient light reaching us from the past in our night skies, and
what we have learned about elementary particle physics, through theory and experiment.
The Planck Era and the Inflation Era
TIME: Planck time, about 10
-43
seconds
At this stage of the Universes evolution, if string theory is right, then theres not much point to
talking about the geometry or temperature of the Universe. We know from duality relations between
string theories that space-time geometry is not fundamental, but emerges as we zoom out to
distance scales larger than the Planck length. Physics at the Planck scale may be literally
unknowable. But this is still work in progress. Well keep you posted on later developments.
Some time after the Planck era, cosmologists believe there was a period called Inflation, which is
discussed in another section. The inflationary era is a little easier to pin down theoretically than is
the Planck era, but even so, the theoretical physics concerning these two periods in the history of
our Universe is still in a state of flux.
In honor of that fact, we represent the Planck era and inflationary era together by a Universe filled
with questions.

Radiation fills the Universe
TIME: between 10
-12
and 10
-10
seconds
This is where the Big Bang officially begins. Somehow at the end of the inflationary era, the Universe
was left in a small, hot, dense quantum state. The so-called vacuum energy of the quantum fields
changes into a seething soup of photons, gluons and other elementary particles. In the Einstein
equations of general relativity, the expansion of the Universe can be driven by energy density in the
form of matter and radiation. During the first phase of the Big bang, the radiation part of the energy
density is so much bigger than the matter part of the energy density that we can forget matter
exists, at least for a while.

Quarks outnumber antiquarks
TIME: 10
-11
seconds
At this stage of the Big Bang, the tiny expanding Universe is filled with radiation creating pairs of
particles and antiparticles, and pairs of particles and antiparticles annihilating back into radiation.
We know from observing elementary particles in the present era that every known particle has an
antiparticle with the opposite charge and the same spin. (Particles with zero charge are their own
antiparticles.) The antiparticle of a quark is called an antiquark. At the beginning of the Big Bang,
the Universe was so hot that quarks and antiquarks were created from radiation and annihilated
back into radiation at a high rate. There was an equal number of quarks and antiquarks on the
average at any one moment.
But as the Universe expanded, it cooled, and the cooler radiation was less likely to create quark-
antiquark pairs. As quarks and antiquarks froze out of the radiation background, a greater number
of quarks than antiquarks was left over.
We know this must have happened, because we observe more quarks than antiquarks today. All of
the protons and neutrons in all of the elements in the Universe are made out of quarks, not
antiquarks. Quarks are clearly more numerous than antiquarks.
But this quark excess cant be explained using the Standard Model of particle physics. Therefore the
domination of quarks over antiquarks is an area where studies of the early Universe could shed light
on particle physics we havent yet been able to study by direct particle scattering in an accelerator.
Weak nuclear bosons become massive
TIME: 10
-10
seconds
At this stage of expansion and cooling of the Universe, the average particle energy is dropping to
the typical energy scale of the weak nuclear force, and something dramatic happens to the particles
that transmit the weak nuclear force.
In elementary particle physics, we have learned that the bosons that transmit the weak nuclear
force (as in nuclear fission) are very heavy, and that they gain their large mass through a process
known as spontaneous symmetry breaking. This process occurs at some definite energy scale, at
the energy of the weak nuclear force. Above that energy scale, the weak nuclear bosons are
massless like the photon that transmits the electromagnetic force between electrons and protons
and the gluon that transmits the strong nuclear force between quarks. Below that energy scale, the
weak bosons are big and heavy, and so the weak nuclear force only acts over a very small distance
scale, about 10
-16
centimeters, about one thousandth the size of a nucleus.
For this reason, cosmologists believe that when the Universe was so hot that the average energy of
the radiation is above the energy of the weak nuclear force, the weak nuclear bosons were massless
and the weak nuclear force had an infinite range like that of the photons and gluons. But as the
Universe expanded and cooled, the average energy dropped to the level where spontaneous
symmetry breaking occurred, and weak nuclear bosons gained mass. This slowed them down and
restricted their force to a small range.
Quarks and gluons are confined
TIME: 10
-4
seconds
The Universe has now expanded and cooled to the point where something incredible happens to the
quarks and gluons that are popping around at high speed by themselves. They undergo an
enormous Universe-wide phase transformation where all of the quarks and gluons in the Universe
become confined together inside mesons such as the pi meson and baryons such as the proton and
neutron. Prior to this era, protons and neutrons and mesons dont exist, there is just a hot soup of
quarks and gluons in their place.
Actually, to be honest, particle physicists have only measured quarks and gluons that are trapped
inside baryons and mesons. Nobody has ever measured a quark or a gluon zipping around freely on
its own. In the theory of quarks and gluons, called Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD for short), it
is believed there is a phase transition at high temperature where quarks and gluons become
deconfined and can and do zip around freely by themselves.
The details of this deconfinement transition are still not well understood, even in the theory.
However, judging by the past successes of theoretical particle physics in predicting phenomena that
were later observed, its probably a safe bet to say that as the Universe cooled to a temperature
below the deconfinement temperature of QCD, quarks and gluons were no longer able to zip
around on their own and became confined together into the mesons and baryons that produced the
Universe we see today.
Proton to neutron ratio is fixed
TIME: 1 second
Prior to this era of the Universe, neutrons and protons were rapidly changing into each other
through the emission and absorption of neutrinos. Now the Universe has expanded and cooled to the
point where that process slows down, and at the end of the slowing down, we are left with about
seven protons for every neutron.
How does this happen? Particle physicists have known for a long time that a neutron just sitting
around will all by itself decay into a proton, an electron and an electron antineutrino, but a proton
wont decay into anything. (This process is illustrated in the animation above.) If we hit a proton
with a electron antineutrino at high enough energy, we can make a neutron and a positron (an
antielectron) come out the other end. And if we hit a proton with an electron, we get a neutron and
an electron neutrino at the other end. So neutrons change into protons by themselves, but the
reverse process requires extra energy from some kind of collision.
When the Universe was sufficiently hot and dense, there were so many electrons and antineutrinos
hitting protons and changing them into neutrons that an equal numbers of protons and neutrons are
changing into each other at the same rate.
However, as the Universe kept expanding and cooling, the average energy level of the particles
dropped and so did the rate of neutrinos hitting protons and changing them into neutrons. The
neutrinos and antineutrinos decoupled from the rest of the matter and radiation, and interactions
between neutrinos and other particles stopped being a very big factor in the dynamics of the
Universe.
So the protons were no longer being changed to neutrons, but the neutrons were still changing
spontaneously all by themselves into protons. That eventually left us with about seven times more
protons than neutrons in the Universe.
To make a hydrogen nucleus, we only need one proton, no neutrons. To make a helium nucleus, we
need two protons and two neutrons. Therefore, a direct consequence of an excess of protons over
neutrons would be an excess of hydrogen over helium, and that is what is observed today. This
gives us a vital observational validation for the Big Bang theoretical description of the early
expanding Universe.
Protons and neutrons form nuclei
TIME: 100 seconds
At this point in the expansion and cooling of the Universe, the average temperature is low enough so
that neutrons and protons can stick together and make nuclei of the lighter elements such as
hydrogen, helium and lithium. Physicists call this process nucleosynthesis, and it had to occur
before the structures we observed today, such as atoms and molecules, could exist.
Neutrons and protons only attract each other at very short distances, less than 10
-13
centimeters.
The strong nuclear force that holds them together is confined and cancels out at larger distances.
So in order to form nuclei, neutrons and protons have to spend some time in very close proximity to
one another. This cant happen if the temperature is too high, because then the protons and
neutrons will be moving too fast to spend much time near one another.
The majority of the neutrons in the Universe wind up stuck in combinations of two protons, two
neutrons, in the helium nucleus. A few neutrons contribute to lithium, with three protons and three
neutrons, and the leftovers wind up in deuterium, which is an isotope of hydrogen with one proton
and one neutron.
Nucleosynthesis sets the stage for the formation of atoms and then galaxies and stars.
Matter dominates over radiation
TIME: 10,000 years
As usual, the Universe is still cooling and expanding. But as this happens, more and more matter is
being created by the high energy radiation. And as the Universe expands, the matter loses less
energy than does the radiation.
Eventually, the energy density in the matter -- mostly in the newly-formed nuclei -- becomes larger
than the energy density in radiation, in massless or nearly massless particles, mainly photons. This
means that in the equations of relativity that described cosmic expansion, the number representing
the energy density of matter becomes much bigger than the number that represents the energy
density of radiation, and we can forget about the radiation in those equations and only concentrate
on what happens to the matter. The matter then dominates in determining us how the Universe
expands from this era on.
At the end of this process, photons scatter much more with each other than they do with matter. As
a result, the energy exchange between matter and radiation becomes less efficient. The photons
thermalize and start behaving as thermal black body radiation. We can measure this cosmic
background radiation today.
After having cooled off for many billions of years, the temperature of this radiation is just a few
degrees above absolute zero. But we can measure this temperature, and we can also measure how
this temperature of the cosmic background radiation varies with direction in the Universe. This tells
us important details about the Big Bang and about particle physics as well.
Protons and electrons form hydrogen
TIME: 500,000 years
By this time there are plenty of protons and other light nuclei in the universe, and there are also
plenty of electrons. But until now, the Universe has been too hot and dense for the electrons to be
captured for very long by a nucleus, without being smacked out of orbit by collisions with other
particles.
When the temperature of the Universe cools to the point where the average speed of an average
electron isnt high enough to escape capture by a proton, then atoms start to form. Since the only
nuclei that exist are hydrogen, helium and lithium, the first atoms to exist are therefore hydrogen,
helium and lithium.
The heavier elements, such as carbon which is necessary for life as we know it to evolve, are
created in a much more interesting manner.
Hydrogen gas makes first stars
TIME: one billion years
Now that the radiation has cooled and decoupled from the matter, and almost all the electrons are
bound up to nuclei in hydrogen, helium and lithium atoms, gravitational forces become important.
Small fluctuations in the matter density and gravitational field begin to grow and coalesce. Hydrogen
gas is pulled together by gravity until the force causes the gas to collapse and ignite through
hydrogen fusion to form the first stars.
Stars produce heavier elements
TIME: 2-13 billion years
When stars first began to form and galaxies took shape, hydrogen, helium and lithium were basically
the only three elements in the Universe. The heavier elements come from inside stars. Stars
consume hydrogen and create heavier elements through the process of nuclear fusion. All the
elements in the Universe today that are heavier than lithium come from the inside of stars.
How did these elements get outside the stars? The diagram above is slightly misleading. The heavy
elements dont just leap from the insides of the stars where they were made. The heavier elements
we see in the world today were all ejected from stars that had reached the end of their lifespan and
exploded into supernovas before settling into old age as a white dwarf, a neutron star or a black
hole.
The process of making the heavy elements and then ejecting them into the Universe takes place
over a time scale that is the lifespan of a star. Thats why the time scale here runs from 2 billion to
13 billion years.
Life evolves
TIME: check your local TV Guide
And here we are, conscious beings able to seek out information about our Universe, and use it to
entertain ourselves.
The future of our Universe?
TIME: billions of years from now
Are we the only ones? We dont know how probable life is in the Universe. The problem is, we
probably dont have an infinite amount of time to find out. The latest observations of very old
galactic clusters, combined with measurements from supernovas, seem to indicate that the Universe
is going to keep on expanding and cooling forever.
Eventually the stars will burn all of their hydrogen, and things could get really cold and boring.
Until then, it doesnt hurt to try to figure out whether the evolution of life has occurred anywhere
else in the Universe. However, string theory is pretty irrelevant to that question. So this is where
well stop.

Physicists define the boundaries of physics by trying to describe them theoretically and then testing
that description against observation. Our observed expanding Universe is very well described by flat
space, with critical density supplied mainly by dark matter and a cosmological constant, that should
expand forever.
When the scale factor a(t) was very small, radiation energy density was much larger than the matter
and vacuum energy densities. The temperature gets smaller as the scale factor rises:

The experimental understanding of particle physics starts to poop out after energies above the
electroweak unification scale, around 1TeV. At a very small scale factor, or a very high temperature,
Grand Unified Theories, supersymmetry, and string theory have to be taken into account in the
cosmological modeling.
This exploration is guided by three outstanding problems with the Big Bang cosmological model:
1. The flatness problem
2. The horizon problem
3. The magnetic monopole problem
Flatness problem
The Einstein equation predicts that any deviation from flatness in an expanding Universe filled with
matter or radiation tends to grow larger as the Universe expands. The ratio of the matter density to
the curvature term in the Einstein equation

shows that tiny deviation from flatness at a much earlier time would grow linearly with scale factor
as the Universe grows and come to dominate the evolution of the space-time. This is consistent with
the fact that matter attracts matter through the gravitational force. Small lumps are going to get
bigger when gravity does its thing.
If the deviations from flatness are observed to be very small today, then extrapolating back to when
the Universe was much smaller, the deviations from flatness must have been immeasurably small.
So why did the Big Bang start off with the deviations from flat spatial geometry being immeasurably
small? This is called the flatness problem of Big Bang cosmology.
Horizon problem
The cosmic microwave background is the cooled remains of the radiation from the radiation-
dominated phase of the Big Bang. Observations of the cosmic microwave background show that it is
highly isotropic thermal radiation. The temperature of this thermal radiation is 2.73 Kelvin. The
variations observed in this temperature across the night sky are very tiny.
If the cosmic microwave background is at such a uniform temperature, it should mean that the
photons have been thermalized through repeated particle collisions. But this presents a problem
with causality in an expanding universe. Using the Robertson-Walker metric with k=0, assuming
that a(t) ~ t
m
, the distance a photon could have traveled since the beginning of the Big Bang at t=0
to some other time t
0
is given by the horizon size r
H
(t
0
)

The power m is set by the equation of state for the energy source under consideration, so that

For a matter or radiation dominated Universe, m=2/3 or 1/2, respectively. Therefore the horizon
size is finite, because the integral converges as t -> 0 for m<1, and it is much smaller than
necessary to account for the isotropy observed in the cosmic microwave background. To make the
horizon integral diverge or grow extremely large would require a Universe that expanded more
rapidly than is possible using matter or radiation in the Einstein equations.
The horizon size predicted by the existing Big Bang model is too small to account for the observed
isotropy in the cosmic microwave background to have evolved naturally by thermalization. So thats
the horizon problem.
Magnetic monopole problem
A magnetic monopole would be a magnet with only one pole. In other words, it would have net
magnetic charge. But magnetic monopoles have never been observed or created experimentally.
When a magnet with a north and south pole is cut in half, it becomes two magnets, each with its
own north and south poles. There doesnt seem to be a way to create a magnet with only one pole.
Yet particle theories like Grand Unified Theories and superstring theory predict magnetic monopoles
should exist.
In particle theory, a magnetic monopole arises from a topological glitch in the vacuum configuration
of gauge fields in a Grand Unified Theory or other gauge unification scenario. The length scale over
which this special vacuum configuration exists is called the correlation length of the system. A
correlation length cannot be larger than causality would allow, therefore the correlation length for
making magnetic monopoles must be at least as big as the horizon size determined by metric of the
expanding Universe.
According to that logic, there should be at least one magnetic monopole per horizon volume as it
was when the symmetry breaking took place.

This creates a problem, because it predicts that the monopole density today should be 10
11
times
the critical density of our Universe, according to the Big Bang model.
But so far, physicists have been unable to find even one.

Inflationary universe?
Matter and radiation are gravitationally attractive, so in a maximally symmetric space-time filled
with matter, the gravitational force will inevitably cause any lumpiness in the matter to grow and
condense. Thats how hydrogen gas turned into galaxies and stars. But vacuum energy comes with a
high vacuum pressure, and that high vacuum pressure resists gravitational collapse as a kind of
repulsive gravitational force. The pressure of the vacuum energy flattens out the lumpiness, and
makes space get flatter, not lumpier, as it expands.
So one possible solution to the flatness problem would be if our Universe went through a phase
where the only energy density present was a uniform vacuum energy. The maximally symmetric
solution to the Einstein equation under those conditions is called de Sitter space and the metric can
be written

In de Sitter cosmology, the Hubble parameter H is constant and related to the cosmological constant
as shown.
The vacuum energy density is uniform in space and time, so the ratio of the curvature of space to
the energy density will decrease exponentially as space expands in time:

Any deviations from flatness will be exponentially suppressed by the exponential expansion of the
scale factor, and the flatness problem is solved.
Both the de Sitter space-time and the Robertson-Walker space-time start expanding from a(t) close
to zero. But for a space-time with matter or radiation, a(t) goes to zero when the time t goes to
zero, because a(t) goes like a power of t. When the scale factor depends exponentially on time, the
scale factor goes to zero when time t goes to minus infinity. Therefore the horizon distance integral
can blow up instead of neatly converge

and solve the horizon problem.
But how does Inflation work?
The vacuum energy that drives the rapid expansion in an inflationary cosmology comes from a
scalar field that is part of the spontaneous symmetry breaking dynamics of some unified theory
particle theory, say, a Grand Unified Theory or string theory.
This scalar field is sometimes called the inflaton. The equation of motion for this field in the de
Sitter metric above is

and the Einstein equation with a scalar field density becomes

The conditions for inflationary behavior require that the scalar field time derivatives are small
compared to the potential, so that most of the energy of the scalar field is in potential energy and
not kinetic energy

These are called the slow roll conditions because the scalar field
evolves slowly when these conditions are satisfied.
Another crucial element in an inflationary model is the thermal
behavior of the scalar field effective potential V
eff
(|). The effective
potential includes quantum corrections from particle scattering. The
shape of the potential can change with temperature, allowing for
phase transitions. At very high temperatures, higher than some
critical temperature T
crit
, the minimum of the effective potential is at
zero, in the symmetric phase of the theory. As the temperature drops
to T=T
crit
, a second minimum forms in the potential at some value|
0

and the vacuum with |=0 becomes metastable. At temperature
T<T
crit
, the new minimum |=|
0
becomes the energetically favorable
vacuum configuration. (The scale usually assumed for T
crit
is the GUT scale of about 10
14
GeV.)
In an inflation model, rather than making uniform transition to the new vacuum, the field stays in
the old vacuum, now called the false vacuum. (When steam does this in the gas-to-liquid phase
transition of water at T
crit
=373K, it is called supercooling.) The vacuum energy of the supercooled
false vacuum drives a de Sitter expansion of the Universe (or the part of it that becomes our
Universe) which is called the period of inflation, with cosmological constant Agiven by

where V(0) is the value of the scalar potential in the false vacuum.
Eventually bubbles form of the true vacuum in the broken symmetric phase with |=|
0
. The slow roll
parameters grow large and the inflationary phase comes to an end. If the false vacuum bubble has
expanded by at least 60 e-folds, the horizon and flatness problems are no more, because the
radiation-dominated expansion that follows comes out of one extraordinarily flat causally connected
domain.
A testable prediction?
Its always good to have testable predictions from a theory of physics, and the inflation theory has a
distinct prediction about the density variations in the cosmic microwave background. A bubble of
inflation consists of accelerating vacuum. In this accelerating vacuum, a scalar field will have very
small thermal fluctuations that are nearly the same at every scale, and the fluctuations will be have
a Gaussian distribution. This prediction fits current observations and will be tested with greater
precision by future measurements of the cosmic microwave background.
So are all the problems solved?
Despite the prediction above, inflation as described above is far from an ideal theory. Its too hard to
stop the inflationary phase, and the monopole problem has other ways of resurfacing in the physics.
Many of the assumptions that go into the model, such as an initial high temperature phase and a
single inflating bubble have been questioned and alternative models have been developed.
Todays inflation models have evolved beyond the original assumption of a single inflation event
giving birth to a single Universe, and feature scenarios where universes nucleate and inflate out of
other universes in the process called eternal inflation.
There is also another attempt to solve the problems of Big Bang cosmology using a scalar field that
never goes through an inflationary period at all, but evolves very slowly so that we observe it as
being constant during our own era. This model is called quintessence, after the ancient spiritual
belief in the Quinta Essentia, the spiritual matter from which the four forms of physical matter are
made.
Another currently unsolved problem is the how to accommodate for Inflation in string cosmology and
M-theory cosmology. There are dimensions to compactify, branes to wrap, hierarchies to set,
geometry to resolve, supersymmetry to break -- a laundry list of processes and transitions that have
to be described within in a string theory cosmology.


A big complicating factor in understanding string cosmology is understanding string theories. String
theories and M theory appear to be limiting cases of some bigger, more fundamental theory. Until
thats sorted out, anything we think we know today is potentially up for grabs.
That being said, there are some basic issues in string theory cosmology:
1. Can string theory make any cosmological predictions relevant to Big Bang physics?
2. What happens to the extra dimensions?
3. Is there Inflation in string theory?
Low energy string cosmology
The baryonic matter that makes up the nuclei of atoms seems to provide only a small fraction of the
total mass in the Universe.

Most of the mass in our Universe appears to occur in the form of dark matter, which is most likely
made up of some exotic particle or particles that interact very weakly and have a very large mass.
String theories require supersymmetry for quantum consistency, and supersymmetric theories
require bosons and fermions to come in pairs, because the supercharge operator turns bosons into
fermions and vice versa.

So supersymmetric theories are good places to look for exotic matter in the form of fermionic
superpartners of bosonic particles that carry forces.
In the Standard Model of particle physics, recall there is a spontaneously broken symmetry that
gives mass to the weak interaction gauge bosons through the Higgs potential. The Standard model
contains three massive gauge bosons, two charged and one neutral, and a massive neutral Higgs
field.
The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) is a supersymmetric version of the
Standard Model. The weak interaction gauge bosons and Higgs fields in the MSSM have fermionic
superpartners, and the neutral superpartners are called neutralinos. A neutralino would make a
good candidate for dark matter, because it couples with weak interaction strength but should have a
high mass.
But this is true only as long as it is stable. A neutralino would be stable if there were nothing of
lower mass that it could decay into, i.e. it is the Lightest Supersymmetric Particle (LSP), and if
something called R-parity is conserved.
The experimental limits on supersymmetric particle masses say that any neutralino LSP out there
must have a mass greater than 40 GeV. A neutralino of that mass could give

and thats already in the right ballpark for the observed amount of dark matter out there.
But the success of such a model depends on whether supersymmetry can be broken at the right
scale. Supersymmetry breaking has other cosmological implications, such as a cosmological
constant with a value that can run away from the very small, but nonzero, value that has recently
been observed in the redshifts of supernovae. So this is far from a settled problem.
Cosmology and string duality
The standard Big Bang cosmology assumes that the Universe began expanding from a state that
was very hot, very small, and very highly curved. The Big Bang model agrees so well with
observation that it is therefore commonly assumed that any cosmological era that preceded the Big
Bang must have involved a Universe that was even hotter and even smaller and more highly curved,
until we reach the Planck scale and the Planck temperature, where our ability to describe geometry
runs into fundamental quantum limits where gravity is strongly coupled and can no longer be
treated as a fixed classical substrate in which particles or strings interact.
But string theory complicates such a naive monotonic extrapolation backwards through time,
temperature and curvature, because in string theory there are symmetries that can obscure the
difference between large and small distance, large and small curvature, and large and small coupling
strength.
One such symmetry is T-duality. Recall that with strings quantized in a flat space-time background,
if one dimension is wrapped into a circle of radius R, by identifying x
i
with x
i
+ 2tR, there are two
new kinds of modes added to the spectrum: modes with quantized momentum going around the
circle with quantum number n, and modes that wrap around the circle with winding number w. The
total mass squared of the string then depends on these two numbers

This formula has a symmetry under the exchange

This is T-duality. The self dual point is where

At the self-dual point, extra massless fields enter the dynamics that reflect an enhanced group of
symmetries.
T-duality has been applied to pre-Big Bang cosmology to build a model that is probably wrong, but
interesting to study nonetheless.
A cosmological solution to the vacuum Einstein equations that is homogeneous but not isotropic is
the Kasner metric, which can be written as

The set of exponents {p
i
} as constrained above have the properties that they are all smaller than
one, and they cant all have the same sign. If n of the exponents are positive so that the Universe
expands as time increases in those n directions, then the remaining D-n exponents are negative,
and the Universe shrinks in those directions as time increases.
String theory has a scalar field called the dilaton, and the Kasner metric in this case extends to

Again, directions with p
i
positive expand as time increases, and those with p
i
negative contract as
time increases. Notice that in this case, isotropic solutions are allowed where p
i
= D
-1/2
.
For every solution with some set of exponents and dilaton {pi,|(t)}, there is a dual solution with
{pi,|(t)} given by

So expanding solutions and contracting solutions are dual to one another.
This duality symmetry has led to an interesting proposal for pre-Big Bang cosmology where the
stringy Universe starts out flat, cold and very large instead of curved, hot and very small. This
early Universe is unstable and starts to collapse and contract until it reaches the self dual point,
where it heats up and starts to expand to give the expanding Universe we observe today.
One advantage to this model is that it incorporates the very stringy behavior of T duality and the
self dual point, so it is a very inherently stringy cosmology. Unfortunately, the model has failings in
both the technical and observational categories, so its no longer considered a viable model for
string cosmology.

Inflation vs. the giant brane collision
Inflation is still the preferred cosmological model of astrophysicists. But efforts to derive a suitable
inflationary potential from the low energy limit of superstring theory have met with many obstacles.
The dilaton field would seem to be an obvious candidate for the inflaton, but in perturbative low
energy string theory the dilaton has no potential, the field is massless and couples to gravity solely
through its kinetic energy, which is positive and would slow down the expansion of the Universe
rather than speed it up.
String theories contain other scalar field called moduli, but the moduli are also massless in
perturbative string theory, and their nonperturbative potentials are still unknown. Any
nonperturbative physics that fixes stable minima for these fields controls the supersymmetry
breaking scale, the sizes of compactified dimensions, the value of the cosmological constant, and the
dynamics of the inflaton field, and thats why deriving a string theory inflationary model has been
such a challenge.
But inflationary models suffer from a conceptual inadequacy in that they are constructed using a
combination of relativistic quantum field theory and classic general relativity. String theory is a
theory of quantum gravity. And so string theory ought to be able to describe cosmology on a more
fundamental level than inflationary models are capable of describing.
The discovery of extended fundamental structures in string theory called D-branes has brought forth
some startling new ideas for the structure of space-time. The first such model by Horava and Witten
started with M-theory in eleven space-time dimensions, compactified on a 6-dimensional Calabi-Yau
space, leaving four space dimensions and time. The four space dimensions are bounded by two
three-dimensional surfaces, or branes, separated by some distance R between the three-branes in
the fourth direction. One of those three-branes, called the visible brane, can be seen as the three-
dimensional world on which we live. The other three-dimensional brane is called the hidden brane,
and we never see it. The volume V of the Calabi-Yau space varies from the visible brane to the
hidden brane, and each brane has a different set of E
8
gauge supermultiplets living on it, with the
gauge couplings of fields living on the visible and hidden branes related by

This model is an effective five-dimensional theory, because the value of R is large compared to the
size of the Calabi-Yau space.
This Horava-Witten world is not a cosmological model, but this picture has been applied to
cosmology with interesting and controversial results. The latest version of braneworld cosmology is
the giant brane collision model, also known as the Ekpyrotic Universe, or the Big Splat.
The Ekpyrotic Universe starts out as a cold, flat, static five-dimensional space-time that is close to
being a supersymmetric BPS state, meaning a state invariant under some special subalgebra of the
supersymmetry algebra. The four space dimensions of the bulk are bounded by two three-
dimensional walls or three-branes, and one of those three-branes makes up the space that we live
on.
But how does the Universe evolve to give the Big Bang cosmology for which there is so much
observational evidence? The Ekpyrotic theory postulates that there is a third three-brane loose
between the two bounding branes of the four dimensional bulk world, and when this brane collides
with the brane on which we live, the energy from the collision heats up our brane and the Big Bang
occurs in our visible Universe as described elsewhere in this site.
This proposal is quite new, and it remains to be seen whether it will survive careful scrutiny.
The problem with acceleration
There is a problem with an accelerating Universe that is fundamentally challenging to string theory,
and even to traditional particle theory. In eternal inflation models and most quintessence models,
the expansion of the Universe accelerates indefinitely. This eternal acceleration leads to some
contradictions in the mathematical assumptions made about space-time in the fundamental
formulations of quantum field theories and string theories.
According to the Einstein equation, for the usual case of a four-dimensional space-time where space
is homogeneous and isotropic, the acceleration of the scale factor depends on the energy density
and the pressure of the stuff in the Universe as

The equation of state for the stuff in the Universe, combined with the Einstein equation, tells us
that

The boundary of the region beyond which an observer can never see is called that observers event
horizon. In cosmology, the event horizon is like the particle horizon, except that it is in the future
and not in the past. In the class of space-times weve been looking at, the amount of the future that
an observer at some time t
0
would be able to see were she or he to live forever is given by

This tells us that an accelerating Universe will have a future event horizon, because

From the point of view of human philosophy or the internal consistency of Einsteins theory of
relativity, there is no problem with a cosmological event horizon. So what if we cant ever see some
parts of the Universe, even if we were to live forever?
But a cosmological event horizon is a major technical problem in high energy physics, because of
the definition of relativistic quantum theory in terms of the collection of scattering amplitudes called
the S Matrix. One of the fundamental assumptions of quantum relativistic theories of particles and
strings is that when incoming and outgoing states are infinitely separated in time, they
behave as free noninteracting states.
The presence of an event horizon implies a finite Hawking temperature and the conditions for
defining the S Matrix cannot be fulfilled. This lack of an S Matrix is a formal mathematical problem
not only in string theory but also in particle theories.

Recent studies have revealed that most Americans, if asked to draw a picture of a scientist, would
come up with a figure looking something like Albert Einstein.
While Einstein was indeed a remarkable individual and gave birth to theories that lie at the
foundation of modern physics, science in general and physics in particular rely on the strength of an
entire community of critical partners in slicing and dicing through speculation and fantasy to get to
the part where we start effectively describing Nature.
String theory has a large, vibrant and diverse international community at work generating, refining
and testing ideas. In this section we interview some random members of the string
community. (Not one of whom bears the slightest physical resemblance to Einstein.)
Cool DVDs and Books On Sale Now
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for
the Ultimate Theory by Brian R. Greene
This new popular guide to string theory is absolutely essential reading. There have
been transformative theoretical discoveries made by string theorists in the last few
years -- insights that have changed the way theoretical physicists think about space-
time itself. String theorist Brian Greene has both the expertise and the flair to
compose a compelling and highly readable portrait of the cutting edge of the cutting edge in
theoretical physics.
The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking, author of the bestselling A Brief History of Time, has a new
betselling book about the Universe and the mysteries of space-time. This book is
much easier to understand than his previous one, with many charts and
illustrations. This is a great addition to anyones home library, anyone who wants to
know where the state of the art stands in the science and theory of the cosmos on a
scale of all eternity.
DVD- Stephen Hawkings Universe by Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking, author of the bestselling A Brief History of Time, presents in this set of
DVDs of his documentary series some of the most astonishing scientific advances in
cosmological thought. Interviews with renowned researchers combined with strikingly
artistic cinematography set the stage for this down-to-earth production on the mysteries
of our universe. Hawkings series is easy to follow, but it doesnt skimp on scientific detail or shy
away from challenging concepts. An outstanding tour of the universe!.
DVD - Life Beyond Earth by Timothy Ferris
The question of whether we are alone in the universe has intrigued humanity for
centuries, and journalist Timothy Ferris presents an extensive look at the quandary in this
fascinating and beautifully produced program from PBS. Ferris, as an engaging and
inquisitive host, begins by discussing the development of life and the theory of evolution, as what
we know about life on Earth could indicate whether its possible for life to have developed elsewhere.
the DVD is filled with startling and beautiful special effects as well as gorgeous footage shot both on
Earth and in space. This is an excellent documentary that also happens to be a pleasure to watch.

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for
the Ultimate Theory by Brian R. Greene
This new popular guide to string theory is absolutely essential reading. There have
been transformative theoretical discoveries made by string theorists in the last few
years -- insights that have changed the way theoretical physicists think about space-
time, about strings, and the role played by black holes and other black objects.
String theorist Brian Greene has both the technical expertise and the artistic flair to
compose a compelling and highly readable portrait of the cutting edge of the cutting
edge in theoretical physics.
Three Roads to Quantum Gravity by Lee Smolin
Even without the help of string theory, mixing the ideas of quantum mechanics with
the mathematics of general relativity poses thorny questions about the meaning of
space-time geometry, measurement and existence. In this book, Professor Lee Smolin
of Penn State tells the story of the three main assaults that physicists and
mathematicians have waged on this difficult front of physics in the postmodern world.

A Brief History of Time - 10th Anniversary edition by Stephen Hawking
In the decade since its publication in 1988, this classic work has introduced the
theoretical physics of space and time to a great many people on our Planet, with
more than nine million copies in forty languages sold worldwide. But those ten years
also saw the dramatic developments in string theory, most notably the advances in
understanding black hole entropy. In this 10th anniversary edition of his book,
Hawking updates the audience on the progress made in this area and tells us how many of his own
predictions turned out to be right.



From the discovery of the electron in 1895 in a small laboratory, to the mammoth accelerators of
today with detectors the size of airplane hangars...


The Standard Model of particle physics has been well measured from almost every angle. Heres
a scorecard of the results. basic / advanced


Why cant we just build an accelerator to test the predictions of string theory? Because the
obstacles are much bigger than money or social commitment.
basic / advanced


Heres a nice loophole: not all of the predictions from string theory take place at the unreachable
Planck scale. Supersymmetry could give us a window on the Planck scale using currently
available technology. basic / advanced


String theory predicts possible extra dimensions of space-time. What are extra dimensions and
how might we detect them if they exist? basic / advanced


Bubble chamber tracks of charged particles
Photo courtesy of Fermilab.

The photo above shows the tracks left in a bubble chamber by tiny electrically charged subatomic
particles as they travel through a special fluid that makes bubbles in the presence of electric charge.
The animated neutral particle, marked N, represents a neutral elementary particle such as a
neutrino colliding with one of the nuclei of the atoms in the fluid, producing a cascade of charged
particles that then decay into other charged particles.
Particle physicists have to decode tracks like those above in order to deduce basic information about
the observed particles, such as the electric charge, particle spin, mass, lepton number, baryon
number, parity and other quantum numbers that turn out to be useful in describing the
elementary particle side of Nature.
Now heres a short lesson in the history of elementary particle observations, which began with the
discovery of the electron in 1895:
A Timeline of Particle Discoveries
1895 The electron is discovered, except electrons are called cathode rays by their discoverer.
1896 X rays and other forms of radioactivity are observed
1899 Alpha particles are discovered, and later shown to be helium nuclei consisting of two
neutrons and two protons.
1911 Nuclear model of atom with heavy nucleus in the middle and light electrons orbiting
around it, is proposed, and becomes accepted.
1911 Electron charge measured in an oil drop experiment indicates that all electrons carry the
same electric charge.
1932 The neutron directly observed in an experiment for first time.
1932 The positron, predicted by a theorist in 1928, is discovered.
1934 Radioactive nuclei produced in the laboratory.
1937 The muon, a charged lepton like the electron only heavier and hence unstable, is
discovered.
1947 Two charged pi mesons, with positive and negative charge, are discovered.
1950 The neutral pi meson is discovered.
1953 The lambda baryon and K meson are discovered.
1956 The electron neutrino, predicted by theory in 1930, is confirmed to exist.
1950s-
1960s
Lots of baryons and mesons being discovered, and their properties occur in regular
patterns that look as if baryons and mesons are made of smaller building blocks. Physicists
exhibit a tendency to name new particles after letters in the Greek alphabet.
1961 The muon neutrino is discovered and shown to be a different particle from the electron
neutrino..
1963 Quark theory postulates that protons are made of smaller particles that carry charges that
come in thirds of the electron charge. The three flavors of quarks are given names: up,
down and strange.
1970s Deep inelastic scattering and other experiments reveal more of the quark structure inside
protons and other hadrons.
1974 A fourth flavor of quark, named charm, is detected in a newly discovered meson called the
J (aka the or Psi).
1975 The tau lepton is discovered, making a triplet of charged leptons with the electron and
muon, leading to predictions of a tau neutrino to accompany the electron neutrino and
the muon neutrino.
1979 A fifth flavor of quark, named bottom, is detected in the newly discovered Upsilon meson.
This pattern leads particle physicists to believe they will find a sixth and final flavor of
quark some day. This predicted last flavor of quark is called top.
1983 The massive gauge bosons that carry the weak nuclear force, called the W
+
,W
-
and Z
0
, are
discovered and the Standard Model of Particle Physics is confirmed.
1989 The lifetime of the Z
0
weak nuclear gauge boson is measured, and agrees precisely with
there being exactly three kinds of neutrinos, and no more.
1995 The top quark is finally directly observed and measured, confirming the predictions of
theorists that there are six flavors of quarks, as described in the Standard Model.
Future The search goes on for the Higgs boson (the only particle predicted by the Standard
Model that hasnt been seen yet), for supersymmetric particles predicted by string
theory, for proton decay and for magnetic monopoles predicted by Grand Unified
Theories, and new kinds of exotic unpredicted particles is ongoing. Perhaps in a few
years there will be some more interesting entries for this page. Come back later and see.

The currently accepted and experimentally well-tested theory of electromagnetic and weak
interactions is called the Standard Model. The Standard Model is based on relativistic quantum
gauge field theory. When physicists in the 1920s tried to combine quantum mechanics of
Heisenberg and Schrodinger with the special relativity of Einstein, they unleashed a can of worms
that was only closed mathematically with the development of relativistic quantum field theory.
The application of relativistic quantum field theory to the classical electromagnetism of Maxwell
opened a new can of worms. The Maxwell equations possess a special local symmetry called gauge
invariance whereby the photon field, also called the vector potential, transforms as

This transformation leaves the field strength

action

and all physical observables unchanged. In the case of electromagnetism, the transformations that
leave the action unchanged form a gauge group known as the unitary group U(1).
An understanding of the quantum aspects of gauge invariance led to the development of relativistic
quantum gauge field theory. Gauge invariance is a powerful symmetry that tames uncontrollable
infinities in quantum amplitudes and encodes the rich symmetry structure of conserved charges
observed in elementary particle physics.
Today, three of the observed forces in Nature have been successfully described as theories of
quantum gauge symmetry, and it turns out that these three forces can be described in terms of
unitary groups of different dimensions. Physicists write this combination of gauge groups as
SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1).
In the quantum gauge theory described by the group SU(N), there end up being N
2
-1 gauge
bosons. The group SU(3) is the gauge group of the theory of the strong interactions known as QCD.
The massless gauge field of this theory is known as the gluon. The group SU(3) has eight
generators, and this turns out to mean that there are eight types of gluons predicted by the theory.
The SU(2)xU(1) part that remains is a bit more complicated. One might expect that the U(1)
refers to electromagnetism, with its single massless gauge boson, known to everyone as the photon.
So the SU(2) must refer to the weak interaction. The group SU(2) has three generators of gauge
symmetry, and that would give three massless gauge bosons to mediate the weak nuclear force.
But thats wrong.
The weak nuclear force is a short range force, behaving as if the gauge bosons are very heavy. In
order to make a gauge invariant theory work for the weak nuclear force, theorists had to come up
with a way to make heavy gauge bosons in a way that wouldnt destroy the consistency of the
quantum theory.
The method they came up with is called spontaneous symmetry breaking, where massless gauge
bosons acquire mass by interacting with a scalar field called the Higgs field. The resulting theory has
massive gauge bosons but still retains the nice properties of a fully gauge invariant theory where the
gauge bosons would normally be massless.
In the end, the successful theory is called electroweak theory, because electromagnetism and the
weak nuclear force start out being mixed together in an overall SU(2)xU(1) gauge symmetry. The
scalar field interactions mix up the four massless gauge bosons, and out of the mixture, there winds
up being three massive gauge bosons, now called the W
+
, W
-
and Z, and one massless gauge
boson, the photon, the carrier of the electromagnetic force. The only explicit remaining gauge
symmetry is the U(1) of electromagnetism.
Particle physicists describe this as saying that the symmetry ofSU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) is
spontaneously broken down to SU(3)xU(1)at the electroweak scale of about 100GeV.
Forces and symmetries
Force
Gauge
bosons
Gauge group Details
Electromagnetism 1 Photon
The unbroken U(1)
combination of
SU(2)xU(1)
symmetry
Photon is massless and neutral, couples to
electric charge, force is infinite range, theory
is called Quantum Electrodynamics, or QED
for short.
Weak nuclear
force
W
+
,W
-
,Z
The broken
combination of
SU(2)xU(1)
symmetry
Gauge symmetry is hidden by interaction
with scalar particle called Higgs, W and Z
are massive, have weak and electric charge,
interaction is short range
Strong nuclear
force
8 Gluons SU(3)
Gluon is massless but self-interacting.
Charge is called quark color, theory is called
Quantum Chromodynamics, or QCD for
short.
Particle experiments in the fifties and sixties produced copious numbers of mesons and baryons
named after letters in the Greek alphabet. Physicists literate in group theory, most notably Murray
Gell-Mann, were able to see that the patterns of symmetries in that teeming zoo suggested that the
huge number of mesons and baryons being discovered could be neatly organized by the principle of
group theory, and that the resulting patterns could be explained in terms of a quark model of
particles with fractional electric charge, carrying some other type of charge that physicists now call
color.
The existence of quarks inside the mesons and baryons had to be deduced mathematically because
free quarks have never been observed by particle physics. It is believed that in the theory of QCD,
the color charge is confined so that the only particle states that can be made from quarks are
those with zero total color charge. A free quark would carry some nonzero color charge and would
not be allowed under the principle of confinement.
Leptons
Particle
Mass
(MeV)
Electric
charge
Color
charge
Lifetime
Electron .511 -1 No >10
24
yr.
Electron
neutrino
<.000003 0 No >300s/eV
Muon 106 -1 No 2.2 x
10
-6
s
Mu neutrino <.19 0 No >15.4s/eV
Tau 1780 -1 No
290 x
10
-15
s
Tau neutrino <18.2 0 No ??

Quarks
Particle
Mass
(MeV)
Electric
charge
Color
charge
Lifetime
Up quark 1 - 5 2/3 Yes NA
Down quark 3-9 -1/3 Yes NA
Strange
quark
75-170 -1/3 Yes NA
Charm
quark
1,150-
1,350
2/3 Yes NA
Bottom
quark
4,000-
4,400
-1/3 Yes NA
Top quark 174,000 2/3 Yes NA


This section uses units where (Plancks constant)/2t and the speed of light = 1. This choice of units
is called natural units. With this choice, mass has units of inverse length, and vice versa. The
conversion factor is 2x10
-7
eV = 1/meter.
Spontaneous symmetry breaking
On the previous page we mentioned that spontaneous symmetry breaking was the phenomenon that
allowed gauge bosons to acquire mass without spoiling the gauge invariance that protects quantum
consistency of the theory. But this trick is not special to electroweak theory; spontaneous symmetry
breaking is a powerful phenomenon that is tremendously important in understanding unified particle
theories in general. So we will explain this phenomenon in more detail here.
The simplest example begins with a complex scalar field |(x) with the Lagrangian

The potential V(|) has a strange looking shape: the minimum is not at the center, but in a circle
around the center, as shown below.

The scalar field |(x) can be written in terms of real and imaginary components, as below top, or
expressed in terms of radial and angular degrees of freedom, shown on the bottom.

The minimum values of the potential lie along the circle where

The problem with describing |(x) in terms of |1 and |2 is that |1 and |2 dont describe the normal
modes of oscillation around the minimum of the potential. The normal modes for this potential are
illustrated in the animation above by the two distinct motions of the yellow ball. One normal mode
goes around and around the circle at the bottom of the potential. The other normal mode bobs up
and down in the radial direction at a fixed value of angle, oscillating about the minimal value.
Written in terms of the normal modes, the field becomes


The physical states in the theory are the massive field r(x) with mass r
0
, and the massless field |(x).
The radial oscillations are resisted by the curved sides of the scalar potential in the radial direction.
Thats why the radial field is massive. But the minimum of the potential is flat in the angular
direction. Thats why the angular mode is massless. This is called a flat direction. Flat directions in
the surface that forms the minimum of the scalar potential lead to massless scalars. This issue
comes up again in string theory in not a good way.
The most crucial chapter in this story is what happens when this scalar field is coupled to a massless
gauge boson A with a local U(1)gauge invariance. The Lagrangian is

The story for the scalar field is as before. The physical scalar fields that oscillate as normal modes
about the potential minimum are the massless angular mode and the massive radial mode. But the
plot thickens with the addition of the massless gauge boson. At the minimum of the scalar potential,
the Lagrangian above remains invariant under the transformation

This transformation relates the normal modes of both the scalar and vector fields so that they can
be written as

The most important thing to notice about the redefined fields above is that the angular oscillations
|(x) of the scalar field end up as part of the physical gauge boson (x). This is the secret behind the
power of spontaneous symmetry breaking. The massless normal mode of the scalar field winds up
mixed into the definition of the physical gauge boson, because of gauge symmetry.
The oscillations of the scalar field around the flat angular direction of the scalar potential turn into
longitudinal oscillations of the physical gauge field. A massless particle travels at the speed of light
and cannot oscillate in the direction of motion. Therefore, the addition of a longitudinal mode of
oscillation means the gauge field has become massive.
The gauge field has a mass, but the gauge invariance has not been spoiled in the process. The value
of the scalar field at the potential minimum determines the mass of the gauge boson, and hence the
range of the force carried by the gauge boson.
This whole coupled system is called the Higgs mechanism, and the massive scalar field that
remains in the end is called a Higgs field.

This section uses units where (Plancks constant)/2t and the speed of light = 1. This choice of units
is called natural units. With this choice, mass has units of inverse length, and vice versa. The
conversion factor is 2x10
-7
eV = 1/meter.
Electroweak unification
The Higgs mechanism forms the basis of the experimentally well-tested theory of the weak and
electromagnetic interactions that is referred to as electroweak theory. The initial gauge invariance
in the theory is SU(2)xU(1), with three massless gauge bosons from SU(2) and one from U(1). In
the end there has to be only one massless gauge boson -- the photon that carries the
electromagnetic force -- and three massive gauge bosons mediating the short range weak nuclear
force.
Therefore, three massless scalar normal modes (also known as Goldstone bosons) are needed to
serve as longitudinal modes to turn the four massless gauge bosons into one massless gauge
boson and three massive gauge bosons.
Remember that for a single complex scalar field, the massless mode, or Goldstone boson, comes
from the angular normal mode that oscillates around the flat circle at the potential minimum.
A circle is just a one-dimensional sphere, or a one sphere. In general, an N-dimensional sphere
has N angular directions, and for oscillations about the sphere, there is one radial direction. We
need a set of scalar fields that transform under the group SU(2)with a potential whose minimum
has the geometry of a three sphere. This can be accomplished by using two complex scalar fields,
transforming as a two-component object under transformations by the group SU(2), so that |(x) is
given by

The potential minimum is at

which is the equation of a three sphere in |-space.
The normal modes for this potential will consist of one radial mode and three angular modes, just
enough to create one massive Higgs boson, and give mass to the three of the four massless gauge
bosons in the SU(2)xU(1) theory. This leaves leaving one massless gauge boson for the remaining
unbroken U(1) gauge invariance.
A complicating factor in electroweak theory is the presence of electroweak mixing. The four
massless gauge bosons in the unbroken SU(2)xU(1) theory are the three SU(2) bosons, lets
called them W
+
, W
-
and W
0
, and the massless U(1) gauge boson, lets call it B. The spontaneous
symmetry breaking winds up mixing the W
0
and the B, into two different gauge bosons -- the
massless photon that carries the electromagnetic force, and the massive Z
0
boson that carries the
weak nuclear force. The mixing is described by the weak mixing angle u
w
as shown below

The final physical states of this theory are the massless photon, and the massive neutral weak
boson, the Z
0
.
The distance scale of the electroweak mixing is roughly 100 GeV, or about 10
-17
m. At scales smaller
than that distance scale, or equivalently, at energy scales much above 100 GeV, the weak gauge
bosons look massless and the full SU(2)xU(1) symmetry is restored. But at larger distance scales,
or lower energy, only the U(1)symmetry of electromagnetism is apparent in the conservation laws
and amplitudes.
The mathematical beauty and experimental success of this idea have led physicists to extend it to
higher energies and possible higher symmetries, as will be described below.
Running coupling constants
In quantum field theory, when computing a particle scattering amplitude, one has to sum over all
possible intermediate interactions, including those that happen at zero distance, or, expressed in
terms of momentum space according to the de Broglie rule, at infinite momentum. These
calculations lead to integrals of the form

which diverge at infinite momentum for n=0,1,2. The limit has to be approached through the use of
a momentum cutoff of some kind. But the physical quantities must be independent of the cutoff, so
that they remain finite as the cutoff is removed.
This procedure is called renormalization, and it cannot be done for any quantum field theory, just
those theories whose divergences obey certain patterns that allow them to be added consistently to
the definition of a finite number of physical quantities, namely the masses and coupling constants,
or charges, in the theory.
The end result is that the masses and charges of elementary particles are dependent on the
momentum scale at which they are measured. For example, the coupling strength of a
renormalizable gauge theory has the mass dependence

where M and m are two mass scales at which the coupling strength is being measured and
compared. The function f(n) depends on the number of degrees of freedom in the theory. For
electromagnetism, f(n) = 1, but for QCD with six flavors of quarks, f(n) =-5.25.
Notice that this means electromagnetism gets stronger at higher energies, while the strong nuclear
force gets weaker as the energy of the particle scattering increases. This is very important for
understanding what physics might look like at higher energies than we can currently measure, see
below.
Quantum field theories whose divergences can be hidden in a finite number of physical quantities
are called renormalizable quantum field theories. Quantum field theories that are not
renormalizable are regarded as being physically realizable theories. Note that the list of
unrenormalizable quantum field theories includes Einsteins theory of gravity, which is one
reason why string theory became popular.

This section uses units where (Plancks constant)/2t and the speed of light = 1. This choice of units
is called natural units. With this choice, mass has units of inverse length, and vice versa. The
conversion factor is 2x10
-7
eV = 1/meter.
Unification and group theory
The success of spontaneous symmetry breaking in explaining electroweak physics led physicists to
wonder whether the three particle theories of the SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) model could be the
spontaneously broken version of a higher unified theory at some higher energy scale, a single theory
with only one gauge group and one coupling constant. This type of theory is called a Grand Unified
Theory, or GUT for short.
The quantum behavior of the known particle coupling constants supports the idea of Grand
Unification. Because of renormalization, the electromagnetic coupling constant grows larger at high
energies, whereas the coupling constants for the weak and strong nuclear interactions grow smaller
at higher energies. At the mass scale

the three coupling constants become equal. Therefore, this ought to be the mass scale where the
single gauge symmetry of a Grand Unified Theory would become spontaneously broken into the
three distinct gauge symmetries of the SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) model.
The single gauge group of a GUT has to be mathematically capable of containing the group product
SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) of the three gauge groups relevant to low energy particle physics. The best
candidate for such a theory is unitary group SU(5), which would give 24 gauge bosons mediating
the single unified force, but there are also other GUT models based on other groups, such as the
orthogonal group SO(10), which would give 45 gauge bosons and contain the SU(5) theory as a
subgroup.
The problem with Grand Unification is that the unified gauge bosons allow quarks to couple to
leptons in such a way that two quarks can be converted into an antiquark and an antilepton. For
example, two up quarks would be allowed to turn into a positron and a down antiquark.
A proton consists of two up quarks and down quark. A neutral pion consists of a down quark and a
down antiquark. Therefore the unified gauge boson in a GUT could mediate proton decay by the
interaction

and other related decays.
The proton lifetime predicted in a GUT is about

whereas the current best measurement of the proton lifetime is

Its important to note here that proton decay can happen through radiative corrections even in the
Standard Model, so we dont expect the proton lifetime to be infinite.
However, it seems that the proton doesnt decay as quickly as predicted by a GUT. This situation is
improved when supersymmetry is added to the GUT, and this will be explained in next section.
What about gravity?
Einsteins elegant and experimentally tested theory of gravity called General Relativity is not a
normal gauge theory like electromagnetism. The symmetry is not a unitary group symmetry like
U(1) or SU(3), but instead a symmetry under general coordinate transformations in four
space-time dimensions. This does not lead to a renormalizable quantum field theory, and so gravity
cannot be unified with the other three known physical forces in the context of a Grand(er) Unified
Theory.
But string theory claims to be a unified theory encompassing all known forces including gravity. How
can that be? The main symmetry apparent in string theory is conformal invariance, or
superconformal invariance, on the string world sheet. This symmetry indicates the spectrum of
allowed mass and spin states in the theory. The spin two graviton and the spin one gauge bosons
exist within this framework naturally as part of the tensor structure of the quantized string
spectrum.
This is another reason why physicists have become so impressed by string theory. There exists a
completely novel way of putting gravity and the other known forces together in the context of a
single symmetry, that is much more powerful than the ordinary quantum gauge theory of particles.
But the question is - is this really the way that nature does it? The answer to that may take a long
time to sort out.
Symmetry breaking in string theory
The two string theories that have shown the most promise for yielding a pattern of symmetry
breaking that is like Grand Unification plus gravity are the heterotic superstring theories based on
the groups SO(32) and E
8
xE
8
. However, these are supersymmetric theories in ten space-time
dimensions, so the symmetry breaking scheme also has to be involved with breaking the
supersymmetry (because fermions and bosons dont come in pairs in the real world) and dealing
with the extra six space dimensions in some manner. So the possibilities, and the possible
complications, are much wider in string theory than in ordinary quantum gauge field theories.
Forgetting these complications for a moment, focus on the group theory of the E
8
xE
8
model. The
group E
8
is an exceptional group with interesting properties too complex to explain here. The
common supposition is that one of the E
8
groups remains unbroken, and decouples from physical
observation as a kind of shadow matter. The other E
8
has the right mathematical structure to break
down to an SU(5) GUT via E
8
-> E
6
-> SO(10) -> SU(5).
The symmetry breaking scale would presumably start somewhere near the Planck scale

and end up at the GUT scale of about 10
14
GeV. The spontaneous symmetry breaking mechanism
would presumably be scalar field potentials of the form shown above, where a subset of the scalar
fields with normal modes like the radial mode become massive, and the remaining massless scalar
fields become longitudinal modes of massive gauge bosons to break the gauge symmetry down to
the next level.
But -- in string theory, at the level of perturbation theory where the physics is most understood --
the scalar potentials seem to be flat in all directions and hence the scalar fields all remain
massless. The solution to symmetry breaking in string theory has to be nonperturbative and is still
regarded as an unsolved problem.

One troubling aspect of spontaneously broken gauge field theories based on the Higgs mechanism of
giving mass to gauge bosons is that its not only the coupling constants, but also the masses, that
get renormalized by quantum corrections from taking into account all possible virtual processes at
all possible momentum scales.
Suppose there is new physics at some scale A, so that the Standard Model of particle physics is no
longer adequate to describe physics at higher momentum scales. The quantum corrections to
fermion masses would depend on that cutoff scale A only logarithmically

whereas the scalar Higgs particles would exhibit a quadratic dependence on the cutoff scale

This means that the masses of Higgs particles are very sensitive to the scale at which new physics
emerges.
This sensitivity is called the gauge hierarchy problem, because the Higgs mass is related to the
masses of the gauge bosons in the spontaneously broken gauge theory. The original question How
do the gauge bosons get mass without spoiling gauge invariance? was only partially answered by
the Higgs mechanism. In a way, question wasnt answered by the Higgs mechanism, it was just
transferred up to a new level, to the question: Why does the Higgs mass remain stable against
large quantum corrections from high energy scales?
The interesting thing about scalar mass divergences from virtual particle loops is that virtual
fermions and virtual bosons contribute with opposite signs and could cancel each other completely
if for every boson, there were a fermion of the same mass and charge.
At the level of quantum mechanics, this type of Fermi-Bose symmetry would entail some quantum
operator, lets call it Q, whose action would be to transform bosons into fermions, and vice versa. In
operator language this would be written

And since this is a symmetry, this operator must commute with the Hamiltonian

Such a theory is called a supersymmetric theory, and the operator Q is called the supercharge.
Since the supercharge corresponds to an operator that changes a particle with spin one half to a
particle with spin one or zero, the supercharge itself must be a spinor that carries one half unit of
spin of its own.
Supersymmetry is such a powerful idea because it is a symmetry under the exchange of classical
and quantum physics. Bosons are particles that obey Bose statistics, meaning that any number of
them can occupy the same quantum state at the same time. Fermions obey Fermi statistics and only
one fermion can occupy any given quantum state at one time. But the classical limit of quantum
physics is approached when the occupation numbers of available states are very high. For example,
in this limit, the quantum photon field behaves like the classical electromagnetic field as
described by Maxwells equations. But then the conclusion for fermions is that there is no classical
limit for fermions. Fermionic fields are inherently quantum relativistic phenomena.
Therefore, any symmetry that exchanges fermions and bosons is a symmetry that exchanges
physics that has a classical limit with physics that has no classical limit. So such a
symmetry should have very powerful consequences indeed.
One big problem with supersymmetry: in the particle physics that is observed in todays
accelerators, every boson most definitely does NOT have a matching fermion with the same
mass and charge. So if supersymmetry is a symmetry of Nature, it must somehow be broken.
Its easy enough for an expert to construct a supersymmetric theory. Its breaking the symmetry,
without destroying the beneficial effects of that symmetry, that has been the hardest part of the
program to fulfill.
But would a broken supersymmetric theory still be able to solve the gauge hierarchy problem? That
depends on the scale at which the supersymmetry is broken, and the method by which it is broken.
In other words, its still an open question. Stay tuned.
How was supersymmetry developed?
Supersymmetry was not developed originally as a means of solving the gauge hierarchy problem.
Supersymmetry was first developed independently by two different groups of theorists separated by
the Cold War back in the 1970s. One group in the USSR was exploring the mathematics of space-
time symmetry, and the other group in the West was trying to add fermions to bosonic string
theory.
In the USSR, mathematicians Golfand and Likhtman wanted to do something exotic with the group
theory of space-time symmetries. The usual group of space-time symmetries in relativistic quantum
field theory is called the Poincar group. This group includes symmetries under spatial rotations,
space-time boosts and translations in space and time.
The action of the group can be described by the algebra of the group, which is defined by a set of
commutation relations between the generators of infinitesimal group transformations. The
algebra of the Poincar group looks like:

The momentum generator P

generates space and time translations. The Lorentz matrices J

v

generate rotations in space and Lorentz boosts in space-time. These are all bosonic symmetries,
which ought to be true because momentum conservation and Lorentz invariance are present in
classical physics.
But the Poincar group also has representations that describe fermions. Since spin 1/2 particles
arise as solutions to a relativistically invariant equation -- the Dirac equation -- this is to be
expected. If there are spin 1/2 particles, could there be spin 1/2 symmetry generators in a space-
time symmetry algebra? Yes! One way to add them is shown below:

What are the new symmetry generators labeled by Q? These are the supercharges mentioned
above.
What Golfand and Likhtman ended up with was the group theory of supersymmetric
transformations in four space-time dimensions, and using this new type of symmetry, they
constructed the first supersymmetric quantum field theory.
Unfortunately for them, their work was ignored, both in the Soviet Union and in the West, until
years later when supersymmetry finally mushroomed into a major topic of investigation in particle
physics. In 1972, Golfand was judged one of the least important researchers in his group at FIAN in
Moscow, and so he was let go in a cost reduction drive in 1973. He remained unemployed for seven
years, until pressure from the world physics community led to his rehiring in 1980.

From strings to superstrings
In the West, physicists working on dual resonance models were beginning to understand them in
terms of vibrating strings whose modes of vibration were solutions to the wave equation on the
worldsheet swept out by the string as it propagated in space-time. The modes of oscillation all have
integer spin, and so these dual resonance models described bosonic string theory. In bosonic
string theory, negative and zero norm states are eliminated from the spectrum by fixing the space-
time dimension D=26, which gives a conformally invariant worldsheet theory and a Poincar
invariant theory in space-time. The infinite-dimensional Virasoro algebra

was discovered to be the string worldsheet analog of the Poincar algebra in space-time, except for
the last term, called the central extension, which arises from quantum effects and is canceled
when the dimension of space-time is 26.
But in order to describe Nature, a theory must contain fermions. Physicist Pierre Ramond began
to investigate solutions to the Dirac equation on the string worldsheet, and found that this led to a
much larger symmetry algebra than the Virasoro algebra, one that included anticommuting
operators F
n
(the worldsheet analog of the supercharge Q). Ramond discovered the super-Virasoro
algebra

or the algebra of a supersymmetric version of conformal invariance, which is called
superconformal invariance.
At the same time, John Schwarz and Andr Neveu were working on a new bosonic string theory that
had an anticommuting field with half integral boundary conditions on the world sheet. They also
found a super-Virasoro algebra, but one that looked slightly different from what Ramond had found.
It was soon realized that the theories developed by Ramond and by Neveu and Schwarz fit together
into two sectors of the same theory, called the RNS model after the initials of the founders. In this
case, the central extension cancels for d=10.
Physicists Gervais and Sakita put the two pictures together into a theory described by a two-
dimensional worldsheet action and noted that this action was invariant under a global (that is,
independent of position) symmetry that transformed bosons into fermions and vice versa. In other
words, string theories with fermions were supersymmetric theories.
But the supersymmetry they uncovered was confined to the two dimensional surface swept out by
the string as it propagated through space-time. The super-Virasoro algebra represents an
extension of the worldsheet symmetry of the theory from conformal invariance to
superconformal invariance. What wasnt understood yet was whether this worldsheet
supersymmetry led to supersymmetry in the space-time in which the string propagates. Or in other
words, whether there was an analogous extension of the space-time symmetry of the theory from
Poincar invariance to super-Poincar invariance.
The biggest problem with bosonic string theory (aside from the lack of fermions) is that the lowest
energy state was a tachyon, or a particle mode with negative mass squared. This means the vacuum
state of the theory is unstable.
In the mid-seventies Gliozzi, Scherk and Olive realized that they could implement a rule to
consistently discard certain states from the RNS model, and after this truncation, known as the GSO
projection, was made on the string spectrum in ten space-time dimensions, the ground state was
massless, and the theory was tachyon free.
But string theory was out of favor by the mid-seventies, and as the number of physicists working in
the field dropped, the pace of work on the theory slowed. It took another five years for John
Schwarz and Mike Green to get together to reformulate the RNS description in a way such that the
space-time supersymmetry of the theory is visible and obvious. So in 1981 superstring theory was
born.
From supersymmetry to supergravity
One of the complicating factors in string theory is that one cannot avoid gravity. And gravity
complicates supersymmetry. It changes the supersymmetry from a global to a local symmetry.
First lets discuss ordinary space-time supersymmetry in a bit more detail. Remember that the
supercharge Q acts on bosonic and fermionic states as

The operator Q is a spinor with spin 1/2. A supersymmetric field theory can be constructed by
studying the variation of some field |by an infinitesimal spinor in the Q direction such that

Then the appropriate terms in an action for the field can be constructed by demanding that the
action be invariant under a variation by .
If is a constant spinor, i.e. not a function of space-time position(x), then the supersymmetry is a
global symmetry. One can take the usual scalar, spinor and gauge fields, such as those present in
the Standard Model, add some number of supercharges Q
I
, figure out how each field in the action
transforms under a variation by , and then figure out what terms to add to the action to cancel the
overall variation variation by and make the theory globally supersymmetric. For one supercharge,
the theory is called N=1 supersymmetry. If there are two supercharges, it is N=2 supersymmetry,
etc.
The result of this exercise for a single supercharge is called theMinimal Supersymmetric
Standard Model, or MSSM, and this will be discussed in the next section. The new fields in the
MSSM have funny names. Higgsinos and gauginos are the names of the fermionic superpartners of
the Higgs scalars and gauge bosons respectively. The scalar superpartners of quarks and electrons
are called squarks and selectrons. Grand Unified Theories can also be turned into supersymmetric
theories, and this will also be discussed in the next section.
If is not a constant spinor, in order words = (x), then the picture changes. The loss of global
Poincar invariance means there is a dynamic space-time geometry, i.e. gravity, rather than the
rigid flat space-time upon which the Standard Model is based. In this case, instead of mere
supersymmetry, we have supergravity. There is a new gauge field for this new local symmetry,
although since (x) is a spinor, the new gauge field has spin 3/2. Its called the gravitino because it
is the superpartner of the graviton. The infinitesimal variation of the gravitino under the spinor (x)
can be written

Superstring theories invariably contain gravity. Therefore the low energy effective field theory that
one gets when looking at a string theory at an energy scale so low that the strings look just like
their massless particle modes is generally a supergravity theory. However, the topic of supergravity
was developed independently from string theory, because eventually particle theorists began to look
for quantum field theories that had larger symmetry groups than the Standard Model or Grand
Unified Theories.
By the time Green and Schwarz realized that their GSO-projected, tachyon-free fermionic string
theories had space-time supersymmetry as well as the worldsheet variety, there was already a
community at work understanding the implications of supersymmetry for particle physics. In 1984,
when Green and Schwarz discovered the anomaly cancellation for Type I superstrings based on the
gauge group SO(32), the most talked-about candidate for a unified field theory was a quantum field
theory based on N=1 supergravity in eleven space-time dimensions. Now both theories are a part of
a larger framework that some people call M-theory.
If supersymmetry is a prediction of superstring theory, and whatever larger theory that may
encompass it, then it is important to know:
a. How is supersymmetry broken to give the non-supersymmetric world we see so far?
b. What are the signs of supersymmetry that might show up in particle physics experiments?

Constructing Supersymmetric Models
A supersymmetric particle model consists of a collection of particle supermultiplets and a set of
potentials that describe the interactions between the particles. The three potentials relevant to
supersymmetry are: the superpotential W, the Khler potential K, and the potential V for the scalar
fields in the theory, derived from W and K.
For N=1 supersymmetry in four space-time dimensions, the two possible types of supersymmetric
particle multiplets are: the chiral multiplet, with a complex scalar field | with spin 0 and a chiral
(that is, either right or left handed) fermion with spin 1/2, and the vector multiplet, composed of
a real (nonchiral) fermion with spin 1/2 and a vector field A

with spin 1.
Local gauge symmetry can be combined with global supersymmetry relatively easily. If a gauge field
transforms according to the rule

where A
a
is an infinitesimal gauge parameter, and the coefficients f
abc
are the structure constants of
the group, then the spin 1/2 superpartner partner for the gauge field, called the gaugino,
transforms as

The chiral and vector multiplets by themselves describe massless noninteracting particles. A mass
matrix M
ij
for fermions, and Yukawa couplings y
ijk
between fermions and scalars, can be added to
theory as long as the action remains invariant under both gauge transformations and
supersymmetry. The chiral multiplet contains an auxiliary field (with no kinetic term in the action) F
i
,
but the equations of motion equate it to a derivative of the superpotential, with no dynamic
evolution of its own.
So in the end, in a model with several generations of chiral multiplets (|
i
,
i
), the action with
superpotential looks like
,
where the terms

are derivatives of the superpotential

with respect to the scalar fields.
The situation for gauge fields is a little more complicated, but similar. The supersymmetry
transformation rules for the gauge field and the gaugino require an auxiliary field D
a
, where a labels
a generator in the gauge algebra.
The resulting scalar potential of the theory, which is important for understanding the ground state of
the full theory, can be written

The D-term in this potential, from the gauge multiplet auxiliary field D
a
, depends on the gauge
coupling g and the gauge group generators T
a
.
The Khler potential will come in later in the section on supergravity.
The Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model
If supersymmetry is to solve the gauge hierarchy problem in the Standard Model, then the Standard
Model has to be derivable as a theory with supersymmetry. When all of the Standard Model fields
are expressed in terms of chiral and gauge multiplets, and interactions terms are added, the
resulting particle theory is called the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, or MSSM for
short.
The particles predicted by the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model are all of the particles that
are already observed in the Standard Model, plus one extra Higgs doublet, and the supersymmetry
partners of those particles.
Every chiral fermion in the Standard Model has a scalar superpartner; collectively these scalars are
referred to as thesfermions, which divide like quarks and leptons into squarks and sleptons. The
complex scalar Higgs SU(2) doublet from the Standard Model has a spin 1/2 superpartner called the
Higgsino, as does the extra Higgs doublet that was made necessary by the supersymmetrization.
The gauge bosons in the Standard Model have fermionic superpartners in the MSSM called
gauginos.
At this stage of the discussion, were still in an imaginary supersymmetric world. The world we
observe does not feature bosons and fermions all neatly paired up together as if they were ready to
board Noahs Ark. So a realistic Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model requires a realistic method
of breaking supersymmetry while still preserving the effects of supersymmetry in stabilizing the
sensitivity of the Higgs mass to quantum corrections.
Supersymmetry breaking and unification
As was learned in the case of spontaneous symmetry breaking in the electroweak interactions, a
theory can have its symmetry cake and eat it too by having a ground state that does not feature
the full symmetry of the action.
The superpotential for a supersymmetric theory yields a scalar potential V(|,|-) = |F|
2
+ |D|
2
/2,
which is either positive or zero. This means any ground state in the theory must have positive or
zero energy. A supersymmetric vacuum has zero supercharge. But because the supersymmetry
algebra relates the supercharge to the energy, so that the ground state energy can be rewritten as
products of the supercharges, a vacuum with zero supercharge must also have zero energy.
Therefore one can break supersymmetry spontaneously by adding terms to the action such that
either |F| or |D| or both are nonzero.
To break supersymmetry using the D-term from the gauge sector of the theory, a gauge term is
added to the superpotential that is invariant under supersymmetry up to a total derivative. This
turns out to require an extra unbroken U(1) gauge symmetry which is not present in the MSSM (and
not observed in Nature). So this method requires looking for a theory beyond the Standard Model in
which this extra U(1) field can live.
To break supersymmetry using the F-term, one can add chiral multiplets that transform as singlets
under the gauge symmetries in the theory. This method also requires extra fields not observed in
Nature.
It is also possible to break supersymmetry non-spontaneously, or explicitly, by directly adding so-
called soft terms to the superpotential that give mass to the gauginos and scalars. Soft in this
context means terms having mass dimension 2 or 3, to avoid quadratic divergences in the quantum
corrections.
Note that is the only way to break global supersymmetry that is consistent with Standard
Model physics is to add soft terms explicitly.
But this is hardly a satisfactory way of resolving the gauge hierarchy problem, because instead of
having to fine tune the theory to tame large quantum corrections to the Higgs mass, new arbitrary
supersymmetry breaking parameters have to be added to the physics by hand. That is in effect
passing the gauge hierarchy problem upstairs.
If global supersymmetry doesnt work, then what about local supersymmetry, i.e. supergravity?
Going from global to local supersymmetry means adding gravity to the theory. So supersymmetry
starts to expand upward and involve unification very naturally. One desires to have a spontaneously
broken supersymmetric theory, and then unification of elementary particle physics with gravity
appears as a necessary ingredient.

Supergravity
When supersymmetry is a local symmetry, in addition to chiral and vector multiplets, there is
another multiplet with the graviton and its supersymmetry partner, the gravitino. Since the graviton
has spin 2, the gravitino +
o

, has spin 3/2, and can be seen in some way as the gauge field of local
supersymmetry. Breaking supersymmetry means giving mass to the gravitino.
As with a gauge boson, the gravitino can gain mass when the ground state of the scalar potential
breaks the symmetry of the action. In the bosonic Higgs scenario, the massless Goldstone modes of
the scalar field end up as the extra longitudinal components that make the massless gauge boson
massive. In the supersymmetric case, in addition to Goldstone bosons, there are massless
fermionic states called Goldstinos, and they provide the longitudinal modes that give mass to the
gravitino and break supersymmetry.
With supergavity, we have the interesting possibility of breaking supersymmetry through
gravitational couplings. For simple N=1 supergravity with a chiral multiplet, the Khler potential
looks like

with M
P
is the Planck mass and W is the superpotential of the theory. The resulting scalar potential
for this theory is

In this model, the gravitino acquires a mass by eating a massless Goldstino, but because of the
minus sign in the scalar potential, the total vacuum energy can be tuned to be zero. This is
important because the total vacuum energy gives the cosmological constant of the theory, and the
one that has been measured is extremely small.
How to test supersymmetry
One experimental and theoretical result that is very encouraging evidence for supersymmetry is the
high energy behavior of three Standard Model coupling constants (two electroweak and one strong).
As stated on a previous page, the search for a Grand Unified Theory with all Standard Model fields
gathered into representations of one big Lie group was encouraged by projections that the three
Standard Model coupling constants meet at a single value at some energy scale M = M
GUT
.
However, when quantum corrections are included, this agreement does not occur precisely at a
single value. The three coupling constants come much closer to a single value when the model in
which they are being calculated is the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model.
So supersymmetry suggests unification, and unification suggests supersymmetry.
None of this is proof, but it adds a lot of excitement to the search for proof.
One thing that a supersymmetric theory should NOT do is violate any of the observed conservation
laws of particle interactions. One important observed conservation law that is easily violated by
unified theories and supersymmetric theories is the conservation of baryon number.
The proton is the lightest baryon and hence, if baryon number is conserved, the proton should be
extremely stable. The observed lifetime of the proton is currently measured to be

Grand unified theories (GUT for short) have gauge bosons that can mediate interactions that change
quarks into leptons and hence allow the proton to decay by various interactions, including

where a proton, with baryon number 1, decays into a positron, which is a lepton and has baryon
number 0, and a neutral pion, which is made of a quark and an antiquark and has baryon number 0.
There are three quarks on the left hand side of the equation and two quarks and a lepton on the
right hand side. If baryon number is not conserved, then the stable proton becomes unstable. The
estimate for the proton lifetime in a GUT without supersymmetry is

So this is bad for unification.
In a GUT with supersymmetry there can also be baryon and lepton number violation, but for many
reasons, the rate ends up being smaller so that

which is still an experimentally viable number, and a region that is close enough to the observed
rate for future measurements, for example, at the Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan, to be
able to tell us something meaningful about supersymmetry.
Dark matter and SUSY
Because of the way stars move inside galaxies, astronomers and astrophysicists have calculated that
there is a huge amount of mass in the Universe that we cant see with telescopes or other
instruments because its not giving off light the way stars do. Thats why they call it dark matter.
The presence of this dark matter can be detected by seeing how it interacts gravitationally, but its
been hard to figure out what it could be made of. One of the leading candidates for dark matter is a
supersymmetry particle called the LSP, for Lightest Supersymmetric Particle.
The success of this idea depends on the stability of the LSP. The LSP is stable in supersymmetric
theories with a symmetry called R-parity, which guarantees that supersymmetric particles are
produced only in pairs. This means that a supersymmetric particle can only decay into another
supersymmetric particle. Hence the lightest one is stable because it cant decay into anything.
The LSP that could make up dark matter has to be massive and electrically neutral, therefore, it
could only be the supersymmetry partner of a neutral particle. The three candidates are: a
gravitino (fermionic superpartner to the graviton), a sneutrino (scalar superpartner to the
neutrino) or a neutralino (fermionic superpartner to a neutral gauge boson or neutral Higgs scalar).
So far the most promising candidate for dark matter is the neutralino, because they interact weakly.
Therefore they would decouple from thermal equilibrium at some early age of the universe and
produce a stable residual density that could be large enough to provide the large amount of dark
matter that is believed to be out there.
There are a lot of hints that supersymmetry could be out there, because it offers ways to solve
many puzzling issues in particle physics and cosmology at once.
This is another arrow pointing to string theory, the only theory of elementary particles that requires
both supersymmetry and gravity to exist in Nature.

Extra dimensions in Newtonian gravity
Theoretical physicists didnt start studying higher dimensional theories of fundamental physics until
after the modern era of 20th century quantum mechanics and relativity had begun. But the physical
consequences of extra dimensions of space can be worked out in Newtonian physics and it is there
that we actually find the first and most important observational constraint on the number of space
dimensions in our Universe.
The first thing we need to know about an extra dimension is: is it compact or noncompact? An
example of a noncompact dimension is the infinite line of real numbers that makes the axis of a
rectangular coordinate system, say the x axis. The line has a one-dimensional volume that is
infinite. An example of a compact dimension would be rolling the x axis into a closed circle of radius
R, which then has a finite volume of 2tR.
The length of the infinitesimal line element in spherical coordinates in D noncompact dimensions is

where dO
D-1
represents the D-1 angular terms in the metric. The gravitational potential u(r) solves
the Laplace equation with a point source, which generalizes in D dimensions to

The force F(r) is proportional to the gradient of the potential u(r), so therefore the force must vary
with distance from the source as G
D
/r
D-1
, where G
D
is Newtons constant, which determines the
strength of the gravitational coupling, as measured in D space dimensions. (Remember, in
Newtonian gravity time isnt being treated as a dimension yet.)
Extra noncompact dimensions would change the force law of gravity away from being the inverse
square law that has been and still is measured experimentally. This would drastically alter the
behavior of planets, because its only in an inverse square potential that the equations of motion of
Newtonian gravity predict stable closed orbits. So astronomers and physicists can set limits on
possible extra dimensions without even going to fancy accelerators, by watching the orbits of
planets and satellites.
A compact extra dimension has a completely different effect on the Newtonian force law. In a D-
dimensional space with one dimension compactified on circle of radius R with an angular coordinateo
that is periodic with period 2t, the line element becomes

The force law derived from the potential that solves the Laplace equation becomes

So if we added an extra compact space dimension to our three existing noncompact space
dimensions, then D=4, but D-2=2, so the force law is still an inverse square law. The Newtonian
force law only cares about the number of noncompact dimensions. At distances much larger than R,
An extra compact dimension cant be detected gravitationally by an altered force law.
The effect of adding an extra compact dimension is more subtle than that. It causes the effective
gravitational constant to change by a factor of the volume 2tR of the compact dimension. If R is
very small, then gravity is going to be stronger in the lower dimensional compactified theory than in
the full higher-dimensional theory.
So if this were our Universe, the Newtons constant that we measure in our noncompact 3 space
dimensions would have a strength equal to the full Newtons constant of the total 4-dimensional
space, divided by the volume of the compact dimension.
Thats an important detail, because the size of the gravitational coupling constant is what
determines the distance scale of quantum gravity. So the distance scale of quantum gravity has to
be very carefully defined in theories with compactified extra dimensions.
The Kaluza-Klein idea
Why would anyone consider a theory with extra dimensions? Because this turns out to provide a
convenient mathematical framework for unifying gravity with electromagnetism and the other known
forces. The first consideration of this idea occurred in the 1920s in separate work by Theodore
Kaluza and Oskar Klein.
Consider a 5-dimensional space-time with space coordinates x
1
,x
2
,x
3
,x
4
and time coordinate x
0
,
where the x
4
coordinate is rolled up into a circle of radius R so that x
4
is the same as x
4
+2tR

Suppose the metric components are all independent of x
4
. The space-time metric can be
decomposed into components with indices in the three noncompact directions (signified by a,b
below) or with indices in the x
4
direction:

The four g
a4
components of the metric look like the components of a space-time vector in four
space-time dimensions that could be identified with the vector potential of electromagnetism with
the usual field strength F
ab


The field strength is invariant under a reparametrization of the compact x
4
dimension via

which acts like a U(1) gauge transformation, as it should if this is to act like electromagnetism. This
field obeys the expected equations of motion for an electromagnetic vector potential in four space-
time dimensions. The g
44
component of the metric acts like a scalar field and also has the
appropriate equations of motion.
In this model, something miraculous happens: a theory with a gravitational force in five space-time
dimensions becomes a theory in four space-time dimensions with three forces: gravitational,
electromagnetic, and scalar.
When the wave equation is solved in this space-time, the periodic boundary conditions in the
compact x
4
dimension lead to integer eigenvalues for the momentum in that direction

This quantized momentum acts as the charge for the vector potential A
a
. The spectrum of the four-
dimensional theory therefore includes an infinite number of charged particles with mass

where n is an integer.
If R is very small, then the masses of these Kaluza-Klein modes are very large even when n is small.
So that means wed need very high energy to create these particles in an accelerator experiment. If
R is very large, then the Kaluza-Klein modes starts to form a continuous spectrum.
But those are not the only new states in the Kaluza-Klein spectrum. The g
44
component of the metric
propagates as a massless scalar field |(x
a
) in the noncompact dimensions. This would result in a
new long range force not observed in Nature. So there has to be a way for this field to become
massive, and quite a lot of work has gone into trying to find a good answer to that question.
As in the Newtonian limit, the Newtons constant measured in four space-time dimensions is again
derived from the full gravitational coupling constant in the five-dimensional theory, divided by the
volume (in this case a circumference) of the compact dimension.
Kaluza-Klein compactification like this has been extended to many dimensions, and to supergravity
theories. The theory of eleven dimensional supergavity with the extra seven space dimensions
compactified on a seven dimensional sphere was a very popular candidate before 1985, and now it
is part of the bigger theory that encompasses and relates all string theories, called M-theory.

Kaluza-Klein in string theory
Superstring theory is a possible unified theory of all fundamental forces, but superstring theory
requires a 10 dimensional space-time, or else bad quantum states called ghosts with unphysical
negative probabilities become part of the spectrum and spoil Lorentz invariance. Fermions are very
complicated to work with in higher dimensions, so for the sake of simplicity lets consider bosonic
string theory, which is Lorentz invariant and ghost-free (albeit tachyonic) in d=26.
A particle trajectory only has one parameter: the proper time along the path of the particle. Going
from particles to strings adds a new parameter: the distance along the string

and thats what makes the outcome of Kaluza-Klein compactification far more interesting in string
theory than it is in particle theory.
If we compactify x
25
on a circle of radius R, we get the usual Kaluza-Klein quantized momentum in
that direction

We want gravity in the theory, so we need to look at closed strings. A closed string can do
something that a particle cannot do: get wrapped around the circle in the compact dimension.
A closed string can be wrapped around the circle once, twice, or any number of times, and the
number of times the string is wrapped around the circle is called the winding number w. The string
oscillator sum in the x
25
direction changes by a constant piece in a way that is consistent with the
periodicity of the closed string and the compact dimension

The string tension T
string
is the energy per unit length of the string. If the string is wound w times
around a circular dimension with radius R, then the energy E
w
stored in the tension of the wound
string is

The mass of an excited string depends on the number of oscillator modes N and excited in the two
directions of propagation around the closed string, minus the constant vacuum energy. Kaluza-Klein
compactification adds the quantized momentum in the compact dimensions, and the tension energy
from the string being wrapped w times around the compact dimension, so that the total squared
mass becomes

A very crucial feature of this mass equation is the symmetry under

This is what makes string theory so different from particle theory. The theory doesnt really
distinguish between the quantized momentum modes, and the winding modes of the string in the
compact dimension. This creates a symmetry between small and large distances that is not
present in Kaluza-Klein compactification of a particle theory.
This symmetry is called T-duality. T-duality is a symmetry that relates different string theories that
everyone thought were completely unrelated before T-duality was understood. T-duality preceded
the Second Superstring Revolution.
The theory gains extra massless particles when the radius R of the compact dimension takes the
minimum value possible given the above symmetry of T-duality, which is just the string scale itself

This is another purely stringy effect, not occurring with particles.
The Kaluza-Klein compactification of strings can be done on more than one dimension at once. When
n dimensions are compactified into circles, then this is called toroidal compactification, because
the product of n copies of a circle is an n-torus, or T
n
for short.
When fermions are added to make superstrings, the mathematics becomes more complicated but
the structures and symmetries become more rich. The most studied superstring compactification is
heterotic string theory compactified on a Calabi-Yau space in six-dimensions (or three complex
dimensions).
These general models all have in common that the space-time is a direct product

where M
4
is the four-dimensional noncompact space-time, and X
6
is some six-dimensional compact
internal space. This means that the metric on M
4
doesnt depend at all on the coordinates in the
internal space. In this case, the gravitational coupling constant that we measure as Newtons
constant G
N
is related to the gravitational coupling G
10
of the full ten-dimensional superstring theory
by

where V
X
is the volume of X6.
In terms of the Planck mass M
Planck
, which is the quantum gravity mass scale determined by the
gravitational coupling G
N
, this relationship becomes

where the mass M
S
is the fundamental mass scale of the full ten-dimensional theory
.

Braneworlds
In the Kaluza-Klein picture, the extra dimensions are envisioned as being rolled up in compact space
with a very small volume, with massive excited states called Kaluza-Klein modes whose mass makes
them too heavy to be observed in current or future accelerators.
The braneworld scenario for having extra dimensions while hiding them from easy detection relies
on allowing the extra dimensions to be noncompact, but with a warped metric that depends on the
extra dimensions and so is not a direct product space. A simple model in five space-time dimensions
is the Randall-Sundrum model, with metric

In this scenario, the three-dimensional space that we experience is a three-dimensional subspace,
called a 3-brane, located at |=0, with another 3-brane located at |=t, or y=tr
c
. The full four-
dimensional space, or five-dimensional space-time, is referred to as the bulk. The warping or
curving of the bulk gives rise to a cosmological constant, which is proportional to the parameter k.
Since the extra space dimension is noncompact, we would expect the force law of gravity to change.
However in this picture, the warping of the brane causes the the graviton to become bound to our
brane, so that the graviton wave function falls away very rapidly away in the direction of the extra
dimension.
This space-time also has oscillations in the extra dimension that are the Kaluza-Klein modes, but in
this case there is a continuous spectrum of modes. This would seem to rule the model out, except
that the Kaluza-Klein modes here are so weakly coupled that they cant be detected on the brane.
Why would this model be preferable to having compact extra dimensions? In Kaluza-Klein
compactification, the Planck mass in the full ten-dimensional superstring

The parameter M is the fundamental mass scale in the full theory in the bulk, and k is about the
same size as M. So for kr
c
>>1, the Planck scale measured on our brane would be about the same
size as the Planck scale as measured in the full theory. This avoids the situation in the Kaluza-Klein
compactification where the Planck mass in four space-time dimensions depends on the volume of
the compactified space, which is hard to control dynamically.
How could they be observed?
One problem with theoretical models of gravity and particle physics is that before they can make
unique testable predictions of new physics, they have to be worked on so that they dont contradict
any existing theoretical or experimental knowledge. That can be a long process, and its not really
over for superstring theories or for braneworld models, especially not braneworld models derived
from superstring theories.
In superstring theory with Kaluza-Klein compactification, there are several different energy scales
that come into play in going from a string theory to a low energy effective particle theory that is
consistent with observed particle physics and cosmology.
The attribute of superstring theory that looks the most promising for experimental detection is
supersymmetry. Supersymmetry breaking and compactification of higher dimensions have to work
together to give the low energy physics we observe in accelerator detectors.
Braneworld models in general are very different from superstring Kaluza-Klein compactification
models because they dont require there to be so many steps between the Planck scale and the
electroweak scale. The huge difference between the Planck scale and the electroweak scale is called
the gauge hierarchy problem.
Supersymmetry is interesting to particle physicists because it can address this problem. But some
braneworld models need supersymmetry for the brane geometry to be stable.
If supersymmetry is detected at next-generation particle physics experiments, then the details of
the supersymmetric physics will have something to say, hopefully, about any underlying superstring
model and whether there is Kaluza-Klein compactification of extra space dimensions into some tiny
rolled up internal space, or whether we are all living as the four dimensional equivalent of flies stuck
on the wall of a higher dimensional Universe.



What would happen if gravity were so strong that even light could not escape its pull? The answer
to this question is the shocking and amazing object known as the black hole. basic / advanced


What is a black hole like? How were they first discovered? How do astronomers know if theyre
seeing one? basic / advanced


Quantum mechanics turns black holes from cold, eternal objects into hot shrinking
thermodynamics. Physicists wondered: Is there a microscopic origin for black hole entropy? basic /
advanced


Find out how and why string theory modifies the space-time equations of Einstein.
basic / advanced


Thanks to the string duality revolution of the early nineties, a microscopic derivation for black hole
entropy has been discovered, at least in theory.
basic / advanced

Try to jump so high that you fly right off of the Earth into outer space. What happens? Why dont
you get very far? You are essentially trapped on Earth, unless you can find a rocket that can travel
at escape velocity away from the Earth.
The escape velocity can be calculated in Newtonian gravity by using energy conservation of an
object of mass m in the gravitational field of a planet of mass M in D space dimensions:

The escape velocity for the surface of the Earth is about 11 km/sec. Notice thats only 37 millionths
of the speed of light. Under what conditions would the escape velocity from the surface of some
planet or star be equal to the speed of light?

For a planet the mass of the Earth, this distance is only about a centimeter. So if the Earth were less
than a centimeter in diameter, the escape velocity at the surface would be greater than the speed of
light.
But thanks to Einstein we learned that when any velocity in a gravitating system approaches the
speed of light, the Newtonian theory of gravity has to be put aside for the relativistically invariance
theory of Einstein. The relativistic formulation of gravity in General Relativity starts with the Einstein
equation relating the curvature of the space-time geometry to the energy of the matter and
radiation in the space-time

The solution to the Einstein equations for the space-time around a planet or star of mass M is called
the Schwarzschild metric

(This is for d=4 space-time dimensions. Can you guess from the Newtonian limit for D space
dimensions what the Schwarzschild metric looks like for d space-time dimensions?) In units where
Newtons constant and the speed of light are both set to unity, the gravitational radius R
G
can be
written

Note that an assumption has been made that we are outside the gravitating body in question. If
were outside the body, and the radial size R of the body satisfies R>R
G
, then we dont need to know
about what happens at coordinate r=R
G
because this metric doesnt apply to r<R.
If R<R
G
, we have to face the problem of what happens when r=R
G
. The metric looks singular there,
but actually the space-time is smooth, so that an observer falling into the bodys gravitational pull
from r>R
G
to r<R
G
wont feel anything special.
But the problem is: such an observer will never, under any circumstances, not even with the
most powerful rocket in the world, ever be able to cross back to r>R
G
.
In this case, this gravitating body is called a black hole, and at the coordinate value r=R
G
, there
exists something called a black hole event horizon. The event horizon is the relativistic geometric
expression of the escape velocity becoming equal to the speed of light. Once anything, even light,
crosses the event horizon, it can never escape back out to r>R
G
again.
Black holes can be created by the gravitational collapse of large stars that are at least twice as
massive as our Sun. Normally, stars balance the gravitational force with the pressure from the
nuclear fusion reactions inside. When a star gets old and burns up all of its hydrogen into helium
and then turns the helium into heavier elements like iron and nickel, it can have three fates. The
first two fates occur for stars less than about twice the mass of our Sun (and one of them will be our
Suns eventual fate). These two fates both depend on the fermionic repulsion pressure described
by quantum mechanics -- two fermions cannot be in the same quantum state at the same time. This
means that the two stable destinies for a collapsing star will be:
1. a white dwarf supported by the fermionic repulsion pressure of the electrons in the heavy atoms
in the core
2. a neutron star supported by the fermionic repulsion pressure of the neutrons in the nuclei of the
heavy atoms in the core
If the mass of the collapsing star is too large, bigger than twice the mass of our Sun, the fermionic
repulsion pressure of either the electrons or the neutrons is not strong enough to prevent the
ultimate gravitational collapse into a black hole.
The estimated age of the Universe is several times the lifespan of an average star. This means there
must have been a lot of stars bigger than twice the mass of our Sun that have burned their
hydrogen and collapsed since the Universe began. Our Universe ought to contain many black holes,
if the model that astrophysicists use to describe their formation is correct. Black holes created by
the collapse of individual stars should only be about 2 to 100 times as massive as our Sun.
Another way that black holes can be created is the gravitational collapse of the center of a large
cluster of stars. These types of black holes can be very much more massive than our Sun. There
may be one of them in the center of every galaxy, including our galaxy, the Milky Way. The black
hole shown above sits in the middle of the galaxy called NGC 7052, surrounded by a bright cloud of
dust 3,700 light-years in diameter. The mass of this black hole is about300 million times the
mass of our Sun.

Since the Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990, there have been many observations of
what are believed to be black holes, including the photograph below of a suspected black hole in the
heart of the galaxy NGC 6251.
But the study of black holes began in theoretical physics long before there were any observations of
these objects by astronomers. Not just an interesting physical phenomenon, black holes are extreme
geometrical objects with fascinating mathematical properties that have posed serious challenges to
the foundations of classical and quantum physics.
Black hole geometry
What makes a black hole so special is the extreme effect it has on the propagation of light. Suppose
we have a black hole space-time described in general relativity by some set of coordinates {x
a
} and
some metric tensor g
ab
. The paths of light rays are described by null (i.e. lightlike) geodesics, which
are computed using the geodesic equation

where D
a
is the covariant derivative for the metric g
ab
and

is the tangent vector to the null geodesic in question, and t is the distance parameter along the
geodesic, the analog of time along a ray of light.
The possible transverse (orthogonal to the propagation direction) deformations of a bundle of null
geodesics can be reduced to three types: the expansion u, rotation e
ab
and shear o
ab
, computed as
the trace, antisymmetric part and symmetric part, respectively, of the covariant derivative of the
geodesic tangent vector

Taking the derivative of the expansion u along a null geodesic leads to what is called the focusing
equation

If were in a space-time with no rotation, and the matter and energy density is positive, then we
arrive at a very important inequality for u that is the key to all the mysterious and
interesting properties of black holes:

The quantity u measures how light rays expand or converge, in other words u measures the focusing
of light by gravity. According to our sign convention, if u is negative, it means the light rays are
being focused together instead of spread apart by the space-time geometry. The above inequality
tells us that once light rays start being converged by gravity with some value u
0
<0, then in a finite
distance along the light ray, nearby light rays will be focused to a point, such that they cross each
other with zero transverse area A

This is bad news if these light rays all emanated from a single source, because it means the light is
being infinitely focused into a singularity, and the concept of a geodesic has broken down. When
uturns negative for both incoming and outgoing light rays, it means that the light has been
trapped, that the escape velocity from that gravitational field has become greater than the speed of
light.
When u is zero or negative for both incoming and outgoing null geodesics orthogonal to a smooth
spacelike surface, that surface is called a trapped surface, and any closed trapped surface must lie
inside a black hole. This an abstract general definition of a black hole that is independent of any
coordinate system used to describe it. Gravity bends light like a lens, and a black hole can be
thought of as a very peculiar type of lens, one that bends light so that it can never be seen.
Black holes have four very important properties which have become known as the Four Laws of
Black Hole Physics of classical general relativity.
The Four Laws of Black Hole Physics
0 The surface gravity k at the event horizon is
constant: it has the same value everywhere on the
event horizon.
1
The change in mass of a black hole is proportional to
the surface gravity times the change in area.
dM = (k/8t) dA
2
The surface area of the event horizon of a black hole
can only increase, never decrease. (This means that
two black holes can join to make a bigger black hole,
but one black hole can never split in two.)
3
It is impossible to lower the surface gravity k at
the event horizon to zero through any physical
process.
Note that according to the second law property, it is impossible for black holes to decay and go
away, because a black hole cannot get smaller or split into smaller black holes. This is going to be
changed when we add quantum mechanics to the theory in the next section.
If these laws look familiar somehow, theres a good reason. This is a tremendously important
similarity that will also be discussed in the next section.
The Singularity Within
The problem with the type of focusing of light that defines the presence of a black hole is that once
it starts, the focusing equation says that it ends in utter disaster. Once a bundle of null geodesics
becomes trapped by crossing to u<0, within a finite distance along each geodesic, u> -Infinity, the
geodesics will cross at a point, and the transverse area of the bundle will go to zero. When this
happens, the necessary conditions for the existence and uniqueness of these geodesics are violated,
and its no longer possible to use the geodesic equations to predict what happens to the geodesics
after they cross.
The space-time will then exhibit one of the two possible behaviors:
1. The space-time curvature in this region remains finite for all observers, but notion of predictability
for the space-time breaks down, and evolution of the space-time can no longer be uniquely
predicted from a set of initial data.
2. The space-time curvature in this region becomes infinite for all or some observers, so that there
simply is no possibility of extending geodesics past the point where they cross, they simply end
there. The space-time as a whole retains its predictability but the region contains a space-time
singularity where the paths of observers simply end their existence, and space-time itself can no
longer be defined.
Is there a Cosmic Censor?
So gravity can focus light so powerfully that it can spontaneously end the existence of observers,
destroy the definition of the space-time itself, or spoil the unique time evolution in a space-time
based on a sensible set of initial data? What is to protect us then from the pathological possibilities
of strong gravitation fields?
The Cosmic Censorship Conjecture proposes that in the context of the theory of general
relativity, in a space-time where the total energy density is positive, pathologies such as space-time
singularities and breakdowns in causality and predictability are always hidden behind the event
horizons of black holes.

If the Four Laws of Black Hole Physics looked familiar, its because they sound just like the Four
Laws of Thermodynamics, which are:
The Four Laws of Thermodynamics
0
The temperature T of a system in thermal
equilibrium has the same value everywhere in the
system.
1
The change in energy of a system is proportional to
the temperature times the change in entropy.
dE = T dS
2
The total entropy of a system can only increase,
never decrease.
3
It is impossible to lower the temperature T of a
system to zero through any physical process.
There seems to be a direct correspondence between the properties of a classical thermodynamic
system, and the properties of a black hole, shown in the table below
Thermodynamic system Black hole
temperature surface gravity at horizon
energy black hole mass
entropy area of horizon
A black hole space-time seems to behave like a thermodynamic system. How could this be true?
This is space-time geometry, after all, not a cylinder of gas or a pot of liquid. The importance of this
apparent thermodynamic behavior of black holes was made undeniable when black hole radiation
was discovered by Hawking.
Black hole radiation, known as Hawking radiation, comes about because relativistic quantum field
theory is invariant under Lorentz transformations, but not under general coordinate transformations.
In flat space-time, two observers moving at a constant velocity relative to one another will agree on
what constitutes a vacuum state, but if one observer is accelerating relative to the other, then the
vacuum states defined by the two observers will differ. This idea, when extended to the space-time
of a black hole, leads to the conclusion that to an observer who stays at a fixed distance from a
black hole event horizon, the black hole appears to radiate particles with a thermal spectrum with
temperature (in units with G
N
=c=1)T=1/8tMk
B
, where k
B
is Boltzmanns constant and M is the
black hole mass.
Since plane waves and Fourier transforms are at the heart of relativistic quantum field theory, this
effect can be illustrated using a classical plane wave, without even appealing to quantum operators.
Consider a simple monochromatic plane wave in two space-time dimensions with the form

An observer traveling in the x-direction with constant velocity b perceives this plane wave as
being monochromatic but the frequency e is Doppler-shifted:

An observer traveling in the x-direction with constant acceleration a does not perceive this plane
wave as being monochromatic. The accelerated observer sees a complicated waveform:

This wave as perceived by the accelerated observer is a superposition of monochromatic waves of
frequency v with a distribution function f(v) that, as shown below

appears to be a thermal distribution with temperature T=a/2tk
B
. The result from this simple
example matches Hawkings black hole result if the acceleration is related to the black hole mass by
a=1/4M. And indeed, the acceleration at the event horizon of a black hole of mass M does satisfy
a=1/4M. Why does this work so well? Because an observer held at a fixed distance from the event
horizon of a black hole sees a coordinate system that is almost identical to that of an observer
undergoing constant acceleration in flat space-time.
But dont be misled by this to think that the full black hole radiation calculation is as simple. Weve
neglected to mention the details because they are very complicated and involve the global causal
structure of a black hole space-time.
Conservation of energy still applies to this system as a whole, so if an observer at a fixed distance
sees a hot bath of particles being radiated by the black hole, then the black hole must be losing
mass by an appropriate amount. Hence a black hole can decrease in area, through Hawking
radiation, through quantum processes.
But if area is like entropy, and the area can decrease, doesnt that mean that the entropy of a black
hole can therefore decrease, in violation of the Second Law of thermodynamics? No -- because the
radiated particles also carry entropy, and the total entropy of the black hole and radiation always
increases.
Where does the entropy come from?
One of the great achievements of quantum mechanics in the 20th century was explaining the
microscopic basis of the thermodynamic behavior of macroscopic systems that were understood in
the 19th century. The quantum revolution began when Planck tried to explain the thermal behavior
of light, and came up with the concept of a quantum of light. The thermodynamic properties of
gases are now well understood in terms of the quantized energy states of their constituent atoms
and molecules.
So what is the microscopic physics that underlies the thermodynamic properties of black holes?
String theory suggests an answer that we will explain in the next section.

If string theory is a theory of gravity, then what is the relationship between strings, gravitons and
space-time geometry?
Strings and gravitons
The simplest case to imagine is a single string traveling in a flat space-time in d dimensions. As the
string moves around in space-time, it sweeps out a surface in space-time called the string
worldsheet, a two-dimensional surface with one dimension of space (o) and one dimension of time
(t).
There are many ways to examine this string theory. One way is to expand the string coordinates
X
a
(o,t) into oscillator modes and demand space-time Lorentz invariance and the absence of negative
norm states. A different way to examine the string theory is through the field theory defined on the
worldsheet, which is described by the action

where h
mn
is the metric on the worldsheet, R
(2)
is the curvature of the worldsheet, and u is a scalar
field called the dilaton. The consistency condition for string theory when described in this manner is
that the field theory on the worldsheet satisfy the condition for scale invariance, also known as
conformal invariance. The set of functions that describe the scaling properties of quantum fields
are called the beta functions. String worldsheet physics is invariant under a change in scale if the
beta function |
u
for the dilaton field u vanishes, which happens when d=26 for bosonic strings.

(For superstring theories, conformal invariance is replaced by superconformal invariance, and the
required space-time dimension is 10.)
The space-time oscillation spectrum satisfies Lorentz invariance in 26 dimensions, so that these
string oscillations on the worldsheet can be classified by the space-time properties of mass and spin,
just like elementary particles. A theory based on open strings has massless oscillations that are
Lorentz vectors, with spin 1. A closed string theory is like a product of two open string theories, with
an oscillation mode that travels in space-time as a two index symmetric tensor, with spin 2.
This mode with spin 2 propagates like as small fluctuation in the gravitational field propagates
according to general relativity. This string oscillation mode should then be the graviton, the particle
that mediates the gravitational force. The presence of this spin 2 oscillation mode was the first clue
that string theory was not a theory of strong interactions, but a potential quantum theory of gravity.
Strings and space-time geometry
In string theory, if we start with flat space-time, we see gravitons in the spectrum, and therefore we
deduce that gravity must exist. But if gravity exists, then space-time must be curved and not flat.
How do the Einstein equations for the curvature of space-time come out of string theory?
If a closed string is traveling in a curved space-time with metric field g
ab
(X) , then the string
worldsheet theory looks like

The space-time metric g
ab
(X) enters the two-dimensional theory on the string worldsheet as a
matrix of nonlinear couplings between the X
a
(o,t).
Once again, the goal of conformal invariance is met by demanding that the beta functions vanish.
When the string coordinates are expanded in a perturbation series in the string scale o, the terms in
the beta functions that are the lowest order in o contain terms proportional to the Ricci curvature
R
ab
of the space-time metric field g
ab
(x) and second derivatives of the scalar field u(x). The
vanishing of the beta functions ends up being equivalent to satisfying the Einstein equation for a
space-time with a scalar field

at distance scales large compared to the string scale. Notice this means that our understanding of
space-time from perturbative string theory will always be incomplete, except in some special
circumstances described below.
What about strings and black holes?
Black holes are solutions to the Einstein equation, therefore string theories that contain gravity also
predict the existence of black holes. But string theories give rise to more interesting symmetries and
types of matter than are commonly assumed in ordinary Einstein relativity. In particular,
electric/magnetic duality in string theory has led to the discovery of many new types of black holes
with combinations of electric and magnetic charge, coupled to both scalar and axion fields. Also,
string theory has motivated an understanding of black holes in higher dimensions, and of black
extended objects such as strings and branes.
Some of these new stringy extreme black hole solutions possess unbroken supersymmetries at the
event horizon, so that the physics at the horizon is protected from higher order perturbative
corrections by virtue of supersymmetric nonrenormalization theorems. These types of black holes
have been important for understanding the origin of black hole entropy in string theory, and that will
be described in the next section.
Is space-time fundamental?
Note that string theory does not predict that the Einstein equations are obeyed exactly.
Perturbative string theory adds an infinite series of corrections to the Einstein equation

So our understanding of space-time in perturbative string theory is only valid as long as space-time
curvature is small compared to the string scale.
However, when these correction terms become large, there is no space-time geometry that is
guaranteed to describe the result. Only under very strict symmetry conditions, such as unbroken
supersymmetry, are there known exact solutions to the space-time geometry in string theory.
This is a hint that perhaps space-time geometry is not something fundamental in string theory, but
something that emerges in the theory at large distance scales or weak coupling. This is an idea with
enormous philosophical implications.

What is black hole entropy?
Two important thermodynamic quantities are temperature and entropy. Temperature is a familiar
quantity measured by direct personal experience. Entropy however is a more mysterious quantity. It
was discovered in an roundabout way, when scientists noticed that in certain experiments with
gases, there was a constant ratio between the heat exchanged in the process, and the temperature
at which the process occurred. So entropy was discovered by observing processes in which it was
conserved.
But what is entropy, really? That answer only came after the macroscopic thermodynamic properties
of gases and fluids were understood in terms of the quantum statistical behavior of their microscopic
constituents. Temperature was revealed to be calculable from the average kinetic energy of a
system of identical particles, and entropy was understood in terms of the number of quantum states
available to the particles in that system.
If we have some system with some energy E, number of particles N, being kept in a volume V, then
the entropy is proportional to the logarithm of the density of quantum states of that system

For an ideal gas, this quantity can be calculated from basic quantum principles to be

The Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of a black hole is one fourth of the area of the event horizon (in
units where Plancks constant=G
N
=1). This black hole entropy behaves just like the entropy of a
thermodynamic system should behave. But what theory will allow us to derive macroscopic black
hole entropy using the density of states of some underlying microscopic quantum statistical system?
Until string theory, there was no clear idea how this task could be accomplished. String theory has
provided at least a partial answer to this question in terms of D-branes.
Black holes and branes in string theory
A black hole is an object that is described by a space-time geometry that is a solution to the Einstein
equation. In string theory at large distance scales, solutions to the Einstein equation are only
modified by very small corrections. But it has been discovered through string duality relations that
space-time geometry is not a fundamental concept in string theory, and at small distance
scales or when the forces are very strong, there is an alternate description of the same physical
system that appears to be very different.
Bearing that in mind, lets start with the simplest charged black p-brane solution known, which is a
charged black hole in four space-time dimensions, described by the metric

If the charge and mass are equal in magnitude (in units where c=G
N
=1) then we have an extreme
black hole, with area 4tQ
2
, and therefore with entropy tQ
2
.

This extreme black hole is a special object because when M=Q, a condition for unbroken
supersymmetry is satisfied that is called the BPS condition. This BPS condition results in the
cancellation of quantum corrections to the effective action for string theory, so that precise
answers can be found by simple calculations at lowest order in perturbation theory.
The above black hole can be thought of as a zero-brane. In the previous section we learned that
string theories contain objects called p-branes and D-branes. A natural generalization of a black
hole is a black p-brane. And there are also BPS black p-branes.
Unfortunately, the string theory solution to the black hole entropy problem cannot be easily
illustrated for the simple charged black hole above. The simplest example that can be calculated
features a system of a one-brane (i.e. a string) with charge Q
1
lying parallel to a five-brane with
charge Q
5
, with momentum p
5
in the finite fifth dimension which is proportional to an integer n
5
.
The space-time metric for this system is very complicated and wont be reproduced here, but from
the area of the extreme object, one can derive the entropy

This is the macroscopic thermodynamic result. Now how does string theory connect this to a
microscopic density of quantum states? We have to look to the relationship between black p-branes
and D-branes. This p-brane system has charges that match an equivalent D-brane system. The
critical parameter that interpolates between the geometric limit and the D-brane description is the
string coupling g times the D-brane charge Q. At large values of gQ, space-time geometry is a good
description of a black p-brane system. But when gQ is much smaller than one, the system can be
described by a bunch of weakly interacting D-branes.
In this weakly coupled D-brane limit, with the BPS condition satisfied, it is possible to calculate the
density of available quantum states. This answer depends on the charges of the D-branes in the
system as follows

The entropy is just the logarithm of the density of states, so from this we can see that the entropy
of the microscopic D-brane system matches the entropy as calculated from the macroscopic event
horizon area.
This was a fantastic result for string theory. But can we now say that D-branes provide the
fundamental quantum microstates of a black hole that underlie black hole thermodynamics? The D-
brane calculation is only easily performed for the supersymmetric BPS black objects. Most black
holes in the Universe probably have very little if any electric or magnetic charge, and are very far
from being BPS objects. Its still a challenge to compute the black hole entropy for such an object
using D-branes.

Humans have been doing math and physics for a long time now -- from the
geometry and logic of the Greek era of the Mediterranean, the numeracy of
the Hindus in India, the development of algebra by Islamic scholars in
Baghdad, to the explosion of knowledge and learning in Europe after the
invention of movable type.

>> -1500 to 1799
>> 1800 to 1899
>> 1900 to now


This is a brief outline of the development of string theory, the details of which
will eventually fill many large volumes written by many people directly and
indirectly involved in this rich and fascinating story.


-
1500
Babylonians establish the metric of flat 2-dimensional
space by observation, in their efforts to keep track of
land for legal and economic purposes.
-518
Pythagoras, a Greek educated by mystics in Egypt and
Babylon, founds community of men and women calling
themselves mathematikoi, in southern Italy. They
believe that reality is in essence mathematical.
Pythagoras noted that vibrating lyre strings with
harmonious notes have lengths that are proportional
by a whole number. The Pythagorean theorem proves
by reasoning what the Babylonians figured out by
measurement 1000 years earlier.
-387
Plato, after traveling to Italy and learning about the
Pythagoreans, founds his Academy in Athens, and
continues to develop the idea that reality must be
expressible in mathematical terms. But Athens at that
time has developed a notoriously misogynist culture.
Unlike his role model Pythagoras, whose school
developed many women mathematikoi, Plato does not
allow women to participate.
-300
Euclid of Alexandria, a gifted teacher, produces
Elements, one of the top mathematics textbooks of
recorded history, which organizes the existing
Mediterranean understanding of geometry into a
coherent logical framework.
-225
Ionian mathematician Apollonius writes Conics, and
introduces the terms ellipse, parabola and hyperbola to
describe conic sections.
-140
Nicaean mathematician and astronomer Hipparchus
develops what will be known as trigonometry.
150
The Almagest by Alexandrian astronomer and
mathematician Claudius Ptolemy asserts that the Sun
and planets orbit around the Earth in perfect circles.
Ptolemys work is so influential that will become official
church doctrine when the Christians later come to rule
Europe.
415
As a glorious 2000 years of ancient Mediterranean
mathematics and science comes to a close, Hypatia of
Alexandria, a renowned teacher, mathematician,
astronomer, and priestess of Isis, is kidnapped from a
public religious procession and brutally murdered by a
mob of angry Christian monks.
628
Hindu mathematician-astronomer Brahmagupta writes
Brahma-sphuta-siddhanta (The Opening of the
Universe). Hindu mathematicians develop numerals
and start investigating number theory.
830
The spread of Islam leads to the spread of written
Arabic language. As ancient Greek and Hindu works
are translated into Arabic, a culture of mathematics
and astronomy develops. The peak of this cultural
flowering is represented by Arabic mathematician Al-
Khworizmi, working at the House of Wisdom in
Baghdad, who develops what will be known as algebra
in his work Hisab al-jabr wal-muqabala.
1070
Iranian poet, mathematician and astronomer Omar
Khayyam begins his Treatise on Demonstration of
Problems of Algebra, classifying cubic equations that
could be solved by conic sections. Khayyam was such
a brilliant poet that history has nearly forgotten that
he was also a brilliant scientist and mathematician.
The moving finger writes...
1120
Adelard of Bath translates works of Euclid and Al-
Khworizmi into Latin and introduces them to European
scholars.
1482
Euclids Elements is published using the revolutionary
new technology of the printing press, leading to a
revolution in education and scholarship as information
becomes more difficult for authorities to control.
1543
Copernicus publishes De revolutionibus orbium
coelestium (On the revolutions of the heavenly
spheres) asserting that the Earth and planets revolve
about the Sun. The Catholic Church has accorded an
official holy status to Ptolemys geocentric Universe.
Copernicus avoids prosecution as a heretic by waiting
until the end of his own life to publish his controversial
claims.
1589
Pisa University mathematics instructor Galileo Galilei
studies the motion of objects and begins a book De
Motu (On Motion) which he never finishes.
1602
Galileo observes that the period of a swinging
pendulum is independent of the amplitude of the
swing.
1609
Johannes Kepler claims in the journal Astronomia Nova
that the orbit of Mars is an ellipse with the Sun at one
focus, and sweeps out equal areas in equal time. He
will later generalize these into his famous Three Laws
of Planetary Motion.
1609
Galileo makes his first telescope. His observations of
the moon show that it looks like a very large lumpy
rock, not a divinely smooth and perfect shining
Platonic heavenly orb. This discovery has enormously
distressing cultural reverberations for Western culture
and religion.
1614
Scottish theologian John Napier, who does
mathematics as a hobby, publishes his discovery of the
logarithm in his work Mirifici logarithmorum canonis
descriptio.
1615
Keplers mother, Frau Katharina Kepler, is accused of
witchcraft by a local prostitute. European witch hunting
was at its peak during Keplers career, and witch
hunting was supported by all levels of society,
including secular officials and intellectuals in
universities. Kepler spends the next several years
making legal appeals and hiding his mother from legal
authorities seeking to torture her into confessing to
witchcraft. Examining an accused witch ad torturam
was a standard court procedure during this era.
1620
Under court order, Keplers mother is kidnapped in the
middle of the night from her daughters home and
taken to prison. Kepler spends the next year appealing
to the duke of Wrttemberg to prevent his imprisoned
mother from being examined ad torturam.
1621
On September 28, Katharina Kepler is taken from her
prison cell into the torture room, shown the
instruments of torture and ordered to confess. She
replies Do with me what you want. Even if you
were to pull one vein after another out of my
body, I would have nothing to admit, and says
the Lords Prayer. She is taken back to prison. She is
freed on October 4 upon order of the duke, who rules
that her refusal to confess under threat of torture
proves her innocence. He also orders her accusers to
pay the cost of her trial and imprisonment.
1622
After having spent most of the last seven years under
the legal threat of imminent torture, Katharina Kepler
dies on April 13, still being threatened with violence
from those who insist she is a witch.
1624
Pope Urban VIII promises Galileo that he is allowed
write about Copernican heliocentrism if he treats it as
an abstract proposition.
1628
Kepler uses Napiers logarithms to compute a set of
astronomical tables, the Rudolphine Tables, whose
accuracy is so impressive that it leads to the quiet
acceptance of the heliocentric solar system by
everyone in the shipping industry.
1629
Basque mathematician Pierre de Fermat, the founder
of modern number theory, begins his brilliant career
by reconstructing the work of Apollonius on conic
sections . Fermat and Descartes pioneer the
application of algebraic methods to solving problems in
geometry.
1632
Galileo publishes Dialogue concerning the two greatest
world systems, which argues convincingly for the
Copernican view that the Earth and planets revolve
around the Sun.
1633
The Inquisition calls Galieo to Rome to answer charges
of heresy against the Catholic Church.
1637
Descartes publishes his revolutionary Discours de la
mthode (Discourse on Method) containing three
essays on the use of reason to search for the truth. In
the third essay Descartes describes analytic geometry,
and uses the letters (x,y,z) for the coordinate system
that will later bear his name.
1642
Galileo dies at his villa in Florence, still under house
arrest from charges of heresy.
1663
Cambridge mathematician Isaac Barrow delivers
lectures on modern methods of computing tangents
that inspire his student Isaac Newton towards
developing calculus
1665
Newtons miraculous years in math and physics,
when he discovers the derivative, which he sees as a
ratio of velocities called fluxions, and the integral,
which he sees as a fluent of the fluxions. Newton
shows that the fluent and fluxion are inversely related,
a result now called the Fundamental Theorem of
Calculus. Newton also develops his ideas on optics
and gravitation. He tries to publish his work in 1671,
but the publisher goes bankrupt.
1683
Jacob Bernoulli, who studied mathematics and
astronomy against the wishes of his career-minded
parents, teaches Newtonian mechanics at the
University of Basel, and turns mathematical physics
into a family business.
1684
Leibniz publishes the beginning of his work on
differential and integral calculus. He discovers the
Fundamental Theorem of Calculus in his own way.
Leibniz originates most of the current calculus notation
including the integral sign. He portrays an integral as a
sum of infinitesimals, a concept rejected by Newton.
1687
Newton publishes Principia Mechanica after Edmund
Halley convinces Newton to write up his alleged proof
that an inverse square force law leads to elliptical
orbits. Newtons Laws of Motion and Law of Gravitation
lead to the development of theoretical physics itself.
This event marks a permanent change in the
relationship between human beings and the Universe.
1693
Newton has a nervous breakdown after his close
companion Fatio De Duillier becomes ill and has to
return to Switzerland.
1696
Brachistochrone problem solved by Jacob and Johann
Bernoulli, an early result in the calculus of variations.
1712
Thanks to a campaign waged by Newton, a
commission appointed by Royal Society of London
President Isaac Newton rules that Leibniz is guilty of
plagiarism against Newton in the discovery of calculus.
English mathematics and theoretical physics go into
decline because those loyal to Newton are hesitant to
adopt Leibniz infinitesimal and his clean, intuitively
appealing notation.
1736
Leonhard Euler begins the field of topology when he
publishes his solution of the Konigsberg Bridge
problem.
1738 Hydrodynamics by Daniel Bernoulli
1748
The multitalented Euler begins the fields of
mathematical analysis and analytical mechanics with
Introductio in analysin infinitorum. Euler introduces the
formula e
ix
= cos x + i sin x
1758
Joseph-Louis Lagrange finds the complete general
solution to the Newtonian equations of motion for a
vibrating string, which explains the harmonic relations
observed by Pythagoras 22 centuries ago.
1770 Hyperbolic trigonometry -- cosh, sinh -- is developed.
1772
Henry Cavendish, a wealthy but paranoid recluse,
discovers that the electrostatic force is described by an
inverse square law similar to gravity, but doesnt tell
anyone in the science community.
1788
Lagrange further develops the analytical mechanics of
Euler when he publishes Mcanique Analytique,
revealing Newtonian mechanics to be a rich field of
exploration for mathematicians.
1789
Aristocrat Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, hiding from
the French Revolution after the storming of the
Bastille, shows that the electrostatic force between
electric charges was very well described by an inverse
square law, in full analogy with Newtonian gravity. This
becomes known as Coulombs Law, even though Henry
Cavendish was the first one to demonstrate it.
1793
Lagrange is arrested during the Reign of Terror, but is
rescued by Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, the founder of
modern chemistry. Unfortunately, Lavoisiers career in
chemistry is ended when he is taken to meet Madame
Guillotine on May 8, 1794.
1799
Pierre-Simon Laplace publishes his work Trait du
Mcanique Cleste (Treatise on Celestial Mechanics)
using differential equations to solve problems in
planetary motion and fluid flow.

1807
After serving as a member of the Revolutionary
Committee that terrorized France, sent Coulomb into
hiding, arrested Lagrange and guillotined Lavoisier, a
repentant Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier causes
controversy with his memoir On the Propagation of
Heat in Solid Bodies. His former teachers Laplace and
Lagrange object to his use of infinite trigonometric
series, which we now call Fourier series. Fourier later
wins the Paris Institute Mathematics Prize for solving
the problem of heat propagation, over the repeated
objections of Laplace and Lagrange.
1817
Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss begins working on non-
Euclidean geometry, and lays the foundations of
differential geometry, but doesnt publish because he
is afraid of the controversy that would result.
1820
Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted studied the
way an electric current in a wire could move the
magnetic needle of a compass, which strongly
suggested that electricity and magnetism were related
somehow.
1823
Transylvanian mathematician Jnos Bolyai, despite
being warned against it by his father, tosses out
Euclids Fifth Axiom and shows that non-Euclidean
geometry is possible. Gauss calls him a genius of the
first order, but then crushes the young man by telling
him he discovered it years ago but failed to publish
due to his own fear of controversy.
1826
Elliptic functions are developed by Gauss, Jacobi and
Abel.
1826
In his book Memoir on the Mathematical Theory of
Electrodynamic Phenomena, Uniquely Deduced from
Experience. Andr Marie Ampre gave a mathematical
derivation of the magnetic force between two parallel
wires with electric current, what we now call Ampres
Law.
1827
Ohms Law of electrical resistance is published in his
book Die galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet.
1827
Augustin-Louis Cauchy develops the calculus of
residues, beginning his work in mathematics that
made complex analysis one of the most important
analytical tools of modern theoretical physics, including
string theory.
1828
Self-educated English mill worker George Green
publishes his work on the use of potential theory to
solve partial differential equations, and develops one of
the most powerful mathematical technologies in
theoretical physics -- the Green function.
1829
Russian mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky
publishes his independent discovery of non-Euclidean
geometry in the Kazan Messenger. Years later, one of
his physics students will become known to history as
Lenins father.
1831 Evariste Galois develops the nascent group theory with
his work on the permutation group.
1831
Michael Faraday discovers magnetic induction, now
known as Faradays Law, where moving magnetism
creates electricity, and this result increases support for
the idea of a unified theory of electricity and
magnetism.
1829
French mathematician Joseph Liouville begins to work
on boundary value problems in partial differential
equations, leading to Sturm-Liouville theory. He then
develops the study of conformal transformations, and
later proves the Liouville Theorem regarding the
invariance of the measure of phase space under what
will later be called Hamiltonian flow.
1834
William Rowan Hamilton applies his mathematical
development of characteristic functions in optics to
mechanics and the enormous and potent mathematical
technology of Hamiltonian dynamics is born.
1840 Karl Weierstrass begins his work on elliptic functions.
1843
After a period of emotional distress and alcohol abuse,
Hamilton finally deduces the noncommutative
multiplication rule for quaternions. His first publication
on the subject is to carve the quaternion formula into a
bridge.
1844
Hermann Grassmann develops exterior algebra and the
Grassmannian.
1851
Bernhard Riemann submits his Ph.D. thesis to his
supervisor Gauss. In his thesis he describes what is
now called a Riemann surface, an essential element in
understanding string theory.
1854
George Boole develops Boolean logic in Laws of
Thought.
1871
Norwegian mathematician Marius Sophus Lie publishes
work on Lie algebras, opening up the field of
differential topology and paving the way for gauge field
theory 100 years later.
1873
James Clerk Maxwell publishes a set of equations from
which all of the observed laws of electromagnetism
could be derived through mathematics. These
equations turn out to have solutions that describe
waves traveling through space with a speed that
agrees with the measured speed of light.
Maxwell makes the bold conclusion that light therefore
must consist of electromagnetic waves, writing that he
could scarcely avoid the inference that light
consists in the transverse undulations of the
same medium which is the cause of electric and
magnetic phenomena.
1874 Cantor invents set theory.
1878
William Clifford develops Clifford algebras from the
work of Grassmann and Hamilton.
1878
Arthur Cayley writes The theory of groups, where he
proved that every finite group can be represented as a
group of permutations.
1883
Wilhelm Killing works on n-dimensional non-Euclidean
geometry and Lie algebras, work that later results in
the concept of a Killing vector, a powerful tool in
differential geometry, quantum gauge field theory,
supergravity and string theory.
1884
Heinrich Hertz rewrites Maxwells Equations in a
more elegant notation where the symmetry between
electricity and magnetism was obvious. Hertz then
creates the first radio waves and microwaves in his
laboratory and shows that these electromagnetic
waves behaved just as observable optical light
behaved, proving that light was electromagnetic
radiation, as Maxwell had predicted.
1884
Ludwig Boltzmann makes a theoretical derivation of
black body radiation using Maxwells equations and
thermodynamics, confirming the 1879 result measured
experimentally by Josef Stefan. Their result, the
Stefan-Boltzmann Law, is not quite right, and the
correct solution in the next century will mark the
beginning of quantum theory.
1887
Michelson and Morley measure the Earths velocity
through the ether to be zero, strongly suggesting that
there is no ether, and that the velocity of light is the
same for all observers, a result whose full implications
have changed the world forever.
1894 Elie Cartan classifies simple Lie algebras
1895
Henri Poincar publishes Analysis Situs, and gives birth
to the field of algebraic topology.
1897 Electron discovered by J.J. Thompson.
1899
Hendrik Lorentz becomes the third person, after Voigt
and FitzGerald, to write down the relativistic
coordinate transformations that will bear his name.
The Lorentz transformations leave the speed of light
invariant, as suggested by the Michelson-Morley
experiment.
1899
David Hilberts Grundlagen der Geometrie
(Foundations of Geometry) is published, putting
modern geometry on a solid rigorous foundation.

1901
Max Planck makes his quantum hypothesis -- that
energy is carried by indistinguishable units called
quanta, rather than flowing in a pure continuum. This
hypothesis leads to a successful derivation of the black
body radiation law, now called Plancks Law, although
in 1901 the quantum hypothesis as yet had no
experimental support. The unit of quantum action is
now called Plancks constant.
1905
Swiss patent clerk Albert Einstein proposes Plancks
quantum hypothesis as the physics underlying the
photoelectric effect. Planck wins the Nobel Prize in
1918, and Einstein in 1921, for developing quantum
theory, one of the two most important developments
in 20th century physics.
1905
Einstein publishes his simple, elegant Special Theory of
Relativity, making mincemeat of his competition by
relying on only two ideas: 1. The laws of physics are
the same in all inertial frames, and 2. The speed of
light is the same for all inertial observers.
1905
Poincar shows that Lorentz transformations in space
and time plus rotations in space form a group, which
comes to be known as the Lorentz group. The Lorentz
group plus translations in space form a group called
the Poincar group.
1907
Minkowski publishes Raum und Zeit (Space and Time),
and establishes the idea of a space-time continuum
1909
Hilberts work on integral equations later leads to the
concept of a Hilbert space in quantum mechanics
1915
Emmy Noether publishes Noethers Theorem,
discovering the relationship between symmetries and
conserved currents that was crucial to the later
development of quantum gauge field theory and string
theory
1915
Einstein, with Hilbert in stiff competition, publishes his
stunning General Theory of Relativity, and is lucky
enough to be able to find observational support for his
theory right away, in the perihelial advance of
Mercury, and the deflection of starlight by the Sun.
1916
German astrophysicist Karl Schwarzschild, serving on
the Russian front in WWI, mails Einstein his paper on
the Schwarzschild metric and Einstein presents it at a
meeting of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Six
months and another major paper later, Schwarzschild
dies of illness on the front.
1921
Theodor Kaluza follows Einsteins advice and publishes
his highly unorthodox ideas about unifying gravity with
electromagnetism by adding an extra dimension of
space that is compactified into a small circle. Kaluza-
Klein compactification will become a rich subject of
exploration in particle theory 60 years later.
1925
Werner Heisenberg shows that his quantized
probability operators form a non-commutative algebra.
Born and Jordan point out to him that this is a matrix
algebra, and the matrix formulation of quantum
mechanics is born. He gets the Nobel Prize in 1932.
1924
Louis duc de Broglie proposes the particle-wave duality
of the electron in his doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne.
He gets the Nobel Prize in 1929.
1926
After learning of the work of de Broglie, Erwin
Schrdinger develops his wave equation version of
quantum mechanics, and unravels its relationship to
the matrix formulation of quantum mechanics by
Heisenberg. He shares the Nobel Prize with Dirac in
1933.
1926
Young Cambridge math student Paul Dirac discovers
the operator algebra behind Heisenbergs Uncertainty
Principle for his doctoral thesis.
1927
Heisenberg discovers the Uncertainty Principle that
bears his name.
1928
Dirac introduces a relativistic quantum equation for the
electron, an equation now known as the Dirac
equation. His equation predicts the discovery of the
positron, and he shares the Nobel Prize with
Schrodinger in 1933.
1928
Werner Heisenberg, Hermann Weyl and Eugene
Wigner begin an exploration of symmetry groups in
quantum mechanics that has far-reaching
consequences.
1929
Edwin Hubble, with the help of his mule driver
Humason, observes the redshift of distant galaxies and
concludes that the Universe is expanding.
1931
Einstein stops using the cosmological constant to keep
the Universe from expanding.
1931
Dirac shows that the existence of magnetic monopoles
would lead to electric charge quantization.
1931
Georges De Rham goes to work on his famous
theorem in cohomology and characteristic classes,
results that would become very important in string
theory.
1935
Young physicist Subramahnyan Chandrasekhar is
attacked by famous astronomer Arthur Eddington for
his report that there is a stellar mass limit beyond
which collapse to what we now call a black hole is
inevitable. Chandrasekhar wins the Nobel Prize in 1983
for his work on stellar evolution.
1938
Wigner constructs a class of irreducible unitary
representations of the Lorentz group
1939
Elements de Mathematique, by Nicholas Bourbaki,
pseudonym for a group of young mathematicians at
the Ecole Normale in Paris, is begun. This extended set
of works aims to set down in writing what is no longer
in doubt, but rather on a boring and rigorous footing,
in modern mathematics.
1943
Chinese mathematician Shiing-Shen Chern begins his
work on characteristic classes and fiber bundles that
will become an important tool for understanding
quantum gauge theories and string theory.
1948
Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger and Tomonaga
Shinichiro report that the divergent integrals that
plague the quantum gauge field theory of
electrodynamics (QED) can be sensibly dealt with
through the process of renormalization.
1953
Based on particle scattering data, Murray Gell-Mann
suggests that there is a new quantum number, called
hypercharge, which we now call strangeness and
recognize as a part of the quark model coming from
the strange quark. Gell-Mann receives the Nobel Prize
in 1969 for his work on the quark model.
1954
Gell-Mann and Francis Low develop the idea that the
physical content of a quantum theory should be
invariant under a change of scale in the theory. This is
called renormalization group, and it turns out to
constrain quantum field theories enough to make it a
very powerful tool for analyzing asymptotic behavior of
quantum theories.
1954
C.N. Yang and R. Mills develop non-Abelian gauge
invariance, an idea that takes 17 years to gain
acceptance, and then revolutionizes particle physics.
1954
Eugenio Calabi conjectures the existence of a Khler
manifold with a Ricci-flat metric with a vanishing first
Chern class, and a given complex structure and Khler
class. This funny-sounding stuff will eventually become
of major importance in understanding superstring
theory.
1964
Cambridge mathematician Roger Penrose proves that
a black hole space-time must contain behind the black
hole event horizon a singularity where space-time
physics ceases to make good sense.
1964
Gell-Mann and George Zweig independently propose
fundamental particles that Gell-Mann succeeds in
naming quarks.
1964
Peter Higgs, Francois Englert and R. Brout suggest a
method of breaking quantum gauge symmetry that is
later called the Higgs mechanism.
1967
In his paper A Model of Leptons, Steven Weinberg
relies on Lie group theory combined with quantum
field theory to explain the weak nuclear and
electromagnetic forces in a single theory, using the
Higgs mechanism to give mass to the weak bosons.
Adbus Salam and Sheldon Glashow share the Nobel
Prize with Weinberg in 1979 for Electroweak Theory.
1967
Sidney Coleman and Jeffrey Mandula prove that well-
behaved particle scattering theories cant have
symmetry algebras that relate particles of different
spin. But the strict consequences of the Coleman-
Mandula Theorem were avoided by the supersymmetry
algebras that were discovered a few years later.
1968
Michael Atiyah and Isadore Singer begin their work on
The Index of Elliptic Operators. They prove the Atiyah-
Singer index theorem, a powerful mathematical result
that will later be used extensively in theoretical
physics.
1968
Gabriele Veneziano begins modern string theory with
his paper on the dual resonance model of the strong
interactions.
1970
Yoichiro Nambu, Leonard Susskind, and Holger Nielsen
independently discover that the dual resonance model
devised by Veneziano is based on the quantum
mechanics of relativistic vibrating strings, and string
theory begins.
1971
Gerard t Hooft publishes his proof that the
electroweak gauge theory of Weinberg is
renormalizable and a new chapter in theoretical
physics begins -- the age of quantum gauge field
theory.
1971
Pierre Ramond, Andr Neveu and John Schwarz
develop a string theory with fermions and bosons.
Gervais and Sakita show that this theory obeys what
turns out to be a supersymmetry algebra in two
dimensions.
1971
Ken Wilson publishes work using the renormalization
group to understand the quantum behavior of systems
undergoing phase transitions, this opens up the study
of critical phenomena in particle physics and leads to
greater understading of quark confinement. Wilson
wins the Nobel Prize in 1981.
1971
Soviet physicists Yuri Golfand and E. Likhtman extend
the Poincar algebra into a superalgebra and discover
supersymmetry in four space-time dimensions.
1973
David Gross, David Politzer, Frank Wilczek and Gerard
t Hooft arrive at the conclusion that the coupling
constant in non-abelian quantum gauge theories
vanishes at high energy. This is called asymptotic
freedom and is one of the major results in the history
of quantum gauge field theory.
1973
Quantum field theories with space-time
supersymmetry in four space-time dimensions are
discovered by Julius Wess and Bruno Zumino.
1974
Stephen Hawking combines quantum field theory with
classical general relativity and predicts that black holes
radiate through particle emission, behave as
thermodynamic objects, and decay with a finite
lifetime into objects that we dont yet understand.
1974
Magnetic monopole solutions of non-Abelian gauge
field theories are found separately by t Hooft and
Moscow physicist Alexander Polyakov.
1974
Joel Scherk and John Schwarz propose string theory as
a theory of quantum gravity, an idea that takes ten
years to be widely appreciated.
1974
Howard Georgi and Sheldon Glashow propose SU(5)
for a Grand Unified Theory (GUT) of all forces except
gravity, the theory predicts that protons could decay.
1975
Instanton solutions of Yang-Mills equations are
discovered by Belavin, Polyakov, A. Schwarz and
Tyupkin. This is exciting because instantons can tell us
about non-perturbative physics that is not
approachable by other means of calculation.
1976
Shing-Tung Yau proves the Calabi conjecture and
discovers the Calabi-Yau space, an important
development for later progress in string theory.
1980
Alan Guth puts forward the idea of an inflationary
phase of the early Universe, before the Big Bang.
1981
Michael Green and John Schwarz develop superstring
theory.
1981
After Schoen and Yau do it in a more traditional
manner, Ed Witten uses supersymmetry to prove the
positive mass conjecture.
1982
Mathematician Karen Uhlenbeck shows that Yang-Mills
instantons discovered by physicists can be used as a
powerful analytical tool in abstract mathematics.
1983
Witten and Luis Alvarez-Gaum derive general
formulas for gauge and gravitational anomalies in
quantum field theories in any dimension. They show
that the gravitational anomalies cancel in type IIB
superstring theory.
1983
Mathematics graduate student Simon Donaldson
discovers exotic 4-manifolds, using instanton
techniques learned in part from Uhlenbeck.
1984
Michael Green and John Schwarz show that superstring
theory is free from quantum anomalies if the space-
time dimension is 10 and the quantum gauge
symmetry is SO(32) or E8 times E8.
1984
Gross, Harvey, Martinec and Rohm find another class
of anomaly-free superstring theories, and call it the
heterotic string theory.
1985
Candelas, Strominger, Horowitz and Witten propose
the use of Calabi-Yau spaces for the extra dimensions
in heterotic string theory.
1991
Connes and Lott develop non-commutative geometry,
which will find its way into the heart of string theorists
at the turn of the millennium.
1993
In search of an understanding of black hole entropy, t
Hooft suggests the idea that the information in a 3+1-
dimensional system cannot be greater than what is
need to store it as an image in 2+1 dimensions.
Susskind generalizes this idea and applies it to string
theory in his paper The World as a Hologram, and the
Holographic Principle is born.
1994
Nathan Seiberg and Ed Witten discover electric-
magnetic duality in N=2 supersymmetric gauge theory
in four space-time dimensions, with very important
applications in both mathematics and string theory.
1995
Witten and Townsend introduce the idea of Type IIA
superstring theory as a special limit of 11-dimensional
supergravity theory with quantized membranes. This
begins the M-theory revolution in superstring theory,
and leads people to ponder the role of space-time in
string theory.
1995
Andrew Wiles, with help from Richard Taylor,
completes a rigorous proof of Fermats Last Theorem.
1995
Joseph Polchinski ignites the D-brane revolution in
string theory with his paper describing extended
objects in string theory formed by dual open strings
with Dirichlet boundary conditions.
1996
In their paper Microscopic Origin of Black Hole
Entropy, Andy Strominger and Cumrun Vafa use D-
branes to count the quantum states of an extreme
black hole and their result matches the Bekenstein-
Hawking value. This stimulates new respect for string
theory from the relativity community.
1997
Juan Maldacena finds that string theory in a
background of five-dimensional anti-de Sitter space
times a five-sphere obeys a duality relationship with
superconformal field theory in four space-time
dimensions. The result, called AdS-CFT duality, opens
up a new era of exploration in string theory.


Here is a very brief outline of the development of string theory, the
details of which will eventually fill many large volumes written by
many people directly and indirectly involved in this rich and
fascinating story.
1921


Electromagnetism can be derived from gravity in a unified
theory if there are four space dimensions instead of three,
and the fourth is curled into a tiny circle. Kaluza and Klein
made this discovery independently of each other.
1970


Three particle theorists independently realize that the dual
theories developed in 1968 to describe the particle
spectrum also describe the quantum mechanics of
oscillating strings. This marks the official birth of string
theory.
1971


Supersymmetry is invented in two contexts at once: in
ordinary particle field theory and as a consequence of
introducing fermions into string theory. It holds the
promise of resolving many problems in particle theory, but
requires equal numbers of fermions and bosons, so it
cannot be an exact symmetry of Nature.
1974


String theory using closed strings fails to describe hadronic
physics because the spin 2 excitation has zero mass. Oops,
that makes it an ideal candidate for the missing theory of
quantum gravity!! This marks the advent of string theory
as a proposed unified theory of all four observed forces
in Nature.
1976


Supersymmetry is added to gravity, making supergravity.
This progress is especially important to string theory,
where gravity cant be separated from the spectrum of
excitations.
1980


String theory plus supersymmetry yields an excitation
spectrum that has equal numbers of fermions and bosons,
showing that string theory can be made totally
supersymmetric. The resulting objects are called
superstrings.
1984


This was the year for string theory! Deadly anomalies
that threatened to make the theory senseless were
discovered to cancel each other when the underlying
symmetries in the theory belong two special groups.
Finally string theory is accepted by the mainstream physics
community as an actual candidate theory uniting quantum
mechanics, particle physics and gravity.
1991-
1995

Interesting work on stringy black holes in higher
dimensions leads to a revolution in understanding how
different versions of string theory are related through
duality transformations. This unlocks a surge of progress
towards a deeper nonperturbative picture of string theory.
1996


Using Einstein relativity and Hawking radiation, there were
hints in the past that black holes have thermodynamic
properties that need to be understood microscopically. A
microscopic origin for black hole thermodynamics is finally
achieved in string theory. String theory sheds amazing
light on the entire perplexing subject of black hole
quantum mechanics.

String Theory: a multihistory
This SMIL movie uses animation, video and music to tell the story of string theory from the points
of view of four string theorists: John Schwarz of Caltech, Michael Green of Cambridge, Lars Brink of
Gteborg University and Pierre Ramond of the University of Florida.
Technical requirements: this movie requires a Real Player, version G2 or later. The video and
animation will perform best on a computer with processor speed of P266 or better, through an
Internet connection with 80k or better.
The Cast

John Schwarz

Pierre Ramond

Lars Brink

Michael Green
The Story
The Early Days
Particle physicists in the sixties were trying to find some sense and order in the results of their
particle scattering experiments. Dual resonance models took on a life of their own, however, when
they were explained in terms of the modes of vibrating relativistic strings, in the work of Nambu,
Veneziano, Susskind and others. This new string theory had a fascinating mathematical structure
that it captivated the young physicists who worked to develop the subject.
The Decline of Dual Models
In the late sixties, Steven Weinberg and others developed relativistic quantum gauge field theory as
a way of unifying the electromagnetic and weak interactions. Until 1971 this was not taken seriously
by the mainstream in physics. But when Gerardt Hooft showed that these theories made good
mathematical sense, the community switched focus very rapidly and soon almost all of particle
physics could be explained using the new relativistic quantum field theory.
Which left string theories, and the people who worked on them, out in the cold.
A Theory of Gravity?
One big problem with string theories as theories of hadronic scattering is that every string theory
constructed had a particle in its spectrum with zero mass and two units of particle spin. There is no
such particle in the hadronic spectrum, of course, and for years this appeared to be a serious
weakness in string theory that John Schwarz and Joel Scherk tried very hard, without success, to
eliminate.
But the graviton, the fundamental quantum that carries the gravitational force, is supposed to have
zero mass and two units of particle spin.
Like Madonna, string theory reinvented itself. But would anybody listen?
The Superstring Revolution
John Schwarz and Michael Green began working together in 1980 to develop supersymmetric string
theories. They were delighted to learn that superstring theories were viable candidates for a
quantum theory of gravity, unlike quantum gauge field theory. In parallel with string theorists, the
quantum field theory community was exploring supersymmetric theories of gravity, called
supergravity, in higher dimensions, typically eleven. But work on such theories was called into doubt
by a paper in 1983 by Ed Witten and Luis Alvarez-Gaum which showed that higher dimensional
supersymmetric theories suffered from mathematical disasters called anomalies.
In the summer of 1984, Green and Schwarz discovered that in superstring theory, there was a way
to avoid the deadly anomaly problem and still have a theory with sensible and realistic quantum
gravity and particle interactions.
The course of theoretical physics was changed forever on that day.
Credits
This movie was made in its entirety, including video, animation, writing and coding, by Patricia Schwarz. The
soundtrack was composed using ACID Pro with loops from the loops for ACIDcollection Whiskey, Cigarettes
and Gumbo. The animations were done using Flash 4 by Macromedia, and the video editing was done with
Adobe Premiere.