STRING THEORY arises

from attempts to answer:

1) What is the world made of?

2) How & Why does the world

change in time?

Answers:
1) MATTER!

E.g. Cars, Houses, Buildings, Planets…

All matter has Mass

2) Forms of matter exert Forces on
each other
and they move under the influence
of these forces

F = ma

For example:
the attraction
which causes
an
apple to fall off
a tree.
 GMm
F= 2
r

F = ma

So far:

2 Questions

2 Answers

MATTER ; FORCE
 Matter comes in millions of
different forms:

Apples, Oranges…
Cars - Hondas BMWs...
Garden Hoses, Grass, Trees...
Earth, Sun, Moon…
Galaxies, Planets, Stars...

All this diversity in fact comes from

only a few hundred atoms:

Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen...

• Each atom has a definite mass.

• Each atom has an approximate size of about:

1
10 m =
−10
m
10000000000
• By going from the large to the tiny, we reduce
the diversity of millions to around a hundred!

• Things simplify further if we look

deeper into the atom:

Protons: +

Neutrons:

Electrons: -

Electrons orbit
the nucleus which
is composed of
Protons and
Neutrons
 • The few hundred atoms reduce to only a
handful of fundamental objects

• Our Millions of Matter objects have

been reduced to just 3 - Great!

Unfortunately, the story starts to get

more complicated:
Proton
& Quarks Colours
Neutron

up red
+ down green

strange blue
charm

bottom
top
• There are 3 ‘generations’ of these quarks
& each quark can have one of 3 different
‘colours’

• Likewise there are 3 ‘generations’ of

electron-like objects called leptons:

Leptons

e electron
ν e electron-neutrino

µ muon
ν µ muon-neutrino

τ tau
ντ tau-neutrino
The idea of String Theory is that this
diversity of quarks and leptons comes
from 1 String

H O

e
p
n

udsctb eµτ

1 String
 What about Forces?

“Hammer Force”

“Fuel Force”

“Astronomical Force”

All this diversity of forces comes from:

Gravity
&
Electromagnetism (& its 2 cousins)
 The Physics of particles is
governed by
“Quantum Mechanics”

-Which brings about a Radical

Change in our concepts of
space.

E.g. Cannot say electron is

here and going nowhere.
Every position is assigned a
number telling us how likely
the electron is to be
at that point. x
Particle physics reduces
both Matter & Force
to one kind of Entity
i.e. particles.

electrons
Matter
protons

photons
Forces
gravitons

Force of Gravity
 NEED OF STRING
THEORY

 The standard model was designed within a framework

known as Quantum Field Theory (QFT), which gives us
the tools to build theories consistent both with quantum
mechanics and the special theory of relativity .

 With these tools, theories were built which describe with

great success three of the four known interactions in
Nature: Electromagnetism, and the Strong and Weak
nuclear forces.

 But unfortunately the fourth interaction, gravity,

beautifully described by Einstein's General Relativity
(GR), does not seem to fit into this scheme.

 Whenever one tries to apply the rules of QFT to GR one

gets results which make no sense.

 For instance, the force between two gravitons (the

particles that mediate gravitational interactions), becomes
infinite and we do not know how to get rid of these
infinities to get physically sensible results.
 In string theory , the known elementary particles are no longer
described as dimensionless mathematical point objects but
rather as extended one dimensional objects.

 The size of the individual strings is so small that any

experiment ,we could possibly perform on an elementary
particle would not reveal its string like nature—it would look
just like the point particle we expect.

 In String Theory, the myriad of particle types is replaced by a

single fundamental building block, a `string'. These strings can
be closed, like loops, or open, like a hair.

 the string is free to vibrate, and different vibrational modes of

the string represent the different particle types, since different
modes are seen as different masses or spins.

 One mode of vibration, or `note', makes the string appear as an

electron, another as a photon .

 There is even a mode describing the graviton, the particle

carrying the force of gravity, which is an important reason why
String Theory has received so much attention.

 So, the first great achievement of String Theory was to give a

consistent theory of quantum gravity, which resembles GR at
macroscopic distances.

 Moreover String Theory also possesses the necessary degrees

of freedom to describe the other interactions! At this point a
great hope was created that String Theory would be able to
unify all the known forces and particles together into a single
`Theory of Everything' .
 ORIGIN
 Work on string theory is made difficult by the very complex
mathematics involved, and the large number of forms that the
theories can take depending on the arrangement of space and
energy.

 String theory was originally developed and explored during the

late 1960s and early 1970s to explain some peculiarities of the
behavior of hadrons (subatomic particles such as the proton and
neutron which experience the strong nuclear force). In particular,
Yoichiro Nambu (and later Lenny Susskind and Holger Nielsen)
realized in 1970 that the dual resonance model of strong
interactions could be explained by a quantum-mechanical model
of strings.

 In the mid 1990s, Joseph Polchinski discovered that the theory

requires the inclusion of higher-dimensional objects, called D-
branes. These added an additional rich mathematical structure to
the theory, and opened up many possibilities for constructing
realistic cosmological models in the theory.

 In 1995, at the annual conference of string theorists at the

University of Southern California (USC), Edward Witten gave
his famous speech on string theory that essentially united the
five string theories that existed at the time, and giving birth to a
new 11-dimensional theory called M-theory. This sparked the
second superstring revolution.

 Recently, the discovery of the string theory landscape, which

suggests that string theory has an exponentially large number of
different vacua, led to discussions of what string theory might
eventually be expected to predict, and to the worry that the
answer might continue to be nothing.
Deep inside proton:

In addition to Electricity/Magnetism
we need to know about
Strong & Weak force.

The mediators of strong

forces are gluons.
 Forces

E.M. Strong Weak

photons
γ,g
& gluons

But gravity does not fit nicely

into the Quantum Mechanical
world.
Applying Q.M. to gravitation
gives infinities.
String Theory combines
all forces
Strong,Weak,
Gravitation,
Electromagnetism
& all matter

electrons,protons,
neutrons…
into one object…

…a

Matter Force

e-, p+, n γ, gluon, graviton

 How does a string accomplish this?

•All particles have energy.

In classical physics:

p2
I. K .E = ; also Rest energy
2m
 2 4 p2 
E = m c + + ... = p 2c 2 + m 2c 4
 2m 

E = mc 2

II. Photons have frequency

(related to colour of light)
E = hf
Planck’s constant
•Strings can vibrate in different ways

For example:
Guitar string

Different vibration Different sound!

•Fundamental string
Different vibration Different particles!

electron photon graviton

 MATHEMATICAL
PROOF

 Pythagoras could be
called the first known
string theorist .

 Pythagoras realized that

vibrating Lyre strings of
equal tensions but
different lengths would
produce harmonious notes
if the ratio of the lengths
of the two strings were a
whole number.

 According to himwave
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

where vw is the wave velocity along the

string.
When solving the equations of motion,
we need to know the "boundary
conditions" of the string. Let's 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
According to Einstein's 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 spacetime 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 spacetime of its
own, where the division
between space and time
depends upon the observer.
The classical equation can be
written as
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:

The string solution above is unlike a

guitar string in that it isn't tied down at
either end and so travels freely through
spacetime 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
 WHY NO
EXPERIMENTAL
PROOF???

Work on string theory is

made difficult by the very
complex mathematics
involved, and the large
number of forms that the
theories can take
depending on the
arrangement of space and
energy.
 TYPES 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 E8XE8 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 spacetime
compactified down to four, matched the
physics observed in our world today.
 But now it is known that this naive picture
was wrong, and that the 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
 Orie
Type nted Details
?
Scalar tachyon,
Open massless
(plus Yes antisymmetric
closed) tensor, graviton and
dilaton
Open Scalar tachyon,
(plus No massless graviton
closed) and dilaton
Scalar tachyon,
massless vector
boson,
Closed Yes
antisymmetric
tensor, graviton and
dilaton
Scalar tachyon,
Closed No massless graviton
and dilaton
•In ordinary circumstances, we can understand
the world by applying different forces
according to the problem at hand.

•A unified Theory of matter & forces is

not just pretty - it is necessary for us to
understand:

1. Physics of the Early Universe

2. Black Holes

E.g. •Universe is expanding

•Every galaxy is facing away from
every other
Going back in time,
• All matter was crunched
up in a very energetic state
within a short distance.
• Under these conditions
all forces were equally
important.
• Hence String Theory
becomes necessary for us
to understand what
− 42
happened at 10 s after the
Big Bang.
•And it makes a startling prediction:

The world contains…

…Extra Dimensions!
 M-THEORY
 Apart from the fact
that instead of one
there are five
different, healthy
theories of strings
(three superstrings
and two heterotic
strings) there was
another difficulty in
studying these
theories: we did not
have tools to explore
the theory over all
possible values of the
parameters in the
theory.

 Each theory was like a

large planet of which
we only knew a small
island somewhere on
the planet. But over
the last four years,
techniques were
developed to explore
the theories more
thoroughly, in other
words, to travel
around the seas in
each of those planets
and find new islands.
  And only then it was
realized that those five
string theories are actually
islands on the same
planet, not different ones!
Thus there is an
underlying theory of
which all string theories
are only different aspects.
This was called M-theory.
The M might stand for
Mother of all theories or
Mystery, because the
planet we call M-theory is
still largely unexplored.
 There is still a third possibility for the
M in M-theory. One of the islands that
was found on the M-theory planet
corresponds to a theory that lives not in
10 but in 11 dimensions. This seems to
be telling us that M-theory should be
viewed as an 11 dimensional theory that
looks 10 dimensional at some points in
its space of parameters. Such a theory
could have as a fundamental object a
Membrane, as opposed to a string. Like
a drinking straw seen at a distance, the
membranes would look like strings
when we curl the 11th dimension into a
small circle.
 Black Hole

 Recently, a remarkable idea called

holography has gained
prominence in string theory .
 It says that a system containing
gravity can be described by
degrees of freedom living on its
boundary rather than in the bulk.
 black holes are extreme geometrical
objects with fascinating
mathematical properties that have
posed serious challenges to the
foundations of classical and quantum
physics.
 What is black hole
according to string
theory

 In string theory at large distance

scales, solutions to the Einstein
equation are only modified by
very small corrections.

 Two important thermodynamic

quantities are temperature and
entropy related to
temperature and entropy .

.
 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

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 Planck's constant=GN=1). 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.
Bearing that in mind, let's start with the
simplest charged black p-brane solution
known, which is a charged black hole in four
spacetime dimensions, described by the
metric

If the charge and mass are equal in

magnitude (in units where c=GN=1) then we
have an extreme black hole, with area 4pQ2,
and therefore with entropy pQ2.
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 .