A First Course in String Theory

This book provides a clear and up-to-date introduction to string theory. Although the book is suitable for undergraduates, there is a fair amount of background knowledge required, including: electromagnetism, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. I also think exposure to general relativity would be useful since some of the material relates to linearized gravity and some to black holes. Lagrangian and Hamiltonian methods are also used frequently, without a background in these readers might be confused when seeing things like the canonical momentum. All-in-all undergraduates studying this book should probably be fairly advanced, third or fourth year students. Also, this book is not just a simplified version of Polchinski or Green/Schwartz/Witten, the approach is different and I believe valuable even to someone that has already studied these. The first three chapters give a quick overview of the motivation for string theory and reviews of electromagnetism, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. Readers should probably already be familiar with most of this material, the presentation here is along the lines of a review. Also, some of the material here isn't covered in a typical course on electromagnetism, such as light-cone coordinates (the light-cone gauge is used extensively in the book) and the effects of higher dimensions on the coupling constant. These chapters are followed by a chapter covering an even more basic topic, a classical vibrating string. After showing relativistic particle action is the length of the particle worldline, the author develops the relativistic string action as the area of the worldsheet, i.e. the Nambu-Goto action. At this point most presentations introduce the Polyakov action. Interestingly, in this book the Nambu-Goto action isn't rewritten as the Polyakov action until close to the end of the book. Another interesting thing is that Zwiebach introduces D-branes here! Following this more results motivated by analogies with classical strings are derived. An extensive discussion light-cone gauge for relativistic particles, electromagnetic fields and linearized gravity paves the way for quantizing open strings, which is done in light-cone gauge. These results are also leveraged for quantizing closed strings. The usual things like Virasoro operators, critical dimension and tachyons are covered. There is also more discussion of D-branes, D- branes are covered very thoroughly in this book. This concludes the first part of the book, the remainder of the book is devoted to developing more advanced applications of this material. The first chapter of part two develops D-branes in more detail. The next chapter considers electric charge, antisymmetric field (Kalb-Ramond) charge, D-branes and how they are all interconnected. The analogy between electric charge and the Kalb-Ramond charge of string theory was very illuminating and it's not something one typically sees. Here and in other places in the book the interplay bet

This book is exactly what it claims to be - a first course in string theory. If you have expectations much beyond a basic introduction to this topic you will be disappointed. You will need a good understanding of general relativity (space-time metrics, light-cone past/present/future, gaussian coordinates, etc.) this will be a good introduction as to how string theory incorporates both the fundimental classical (relativistic) and quantum-mechanical concepts. If you have no familiarity with relativity you will struggle with this book because the understanding of reference frames (and the transformations from one to another) is crutial. As a result, an upper division physics major should be able to follow the math and related concepts while an upper division chemistry or math major would probably struggle with the material . The problems presented throughout the chapters are clearly the result of this course having been used in the field and a graduate/post graduate physics student may find them coorespondingly simple or naive. Again, this book is written with the upper-division physics student in mind.

My interest in String theory arose 3 years ago reading Smolin's book "Three Roads to Quantum Gravity". I knew I couldn't understand the math of String Theory so instead I spent two years preparing by learning Quantum Field Theory and Differential Geometry - then Zwiebach's book came out. There were three issues that I wanted to understand 1) How did string theory actual produce a framework for the standard model, 2) What was the connection between string theory and black holes and 3) How was it that small distances could be indistinquishable from large distances. First Course delivered nicely. Part 1 - Basics took some effort not only because the material was new but also because it was not motivated, ie. I did not understand why I was studying the material, I did not understand where it was leading. A little trust and faith went a long way though because then I got to Part 2 - Developments where chapters 15, 16 and 17 addressed the topics I was interested in beautifully. In addition my interest in string theory now extends into other areas for example Maxwell fields on D-branes. I'll be going back over Part 1 - Basics soon since I feel I will get a lot more out those chapters having digested Part 2 - Developments. A great book and one I'm grateful for as how many readable introductions are there? - not many!

This book indeed does the impossible, for it introduces, at a level accessible to undergraduate physics and mathematics students, a subject that ranks as the most formidable construction ever attempted in mathematical physics. Using highly esoteric mathematical concepts, string theory, and its modern metamorphosis, M-theory, requires a high concentration of mental effort and long periods of time to assimilate. It has been difficult for students and those who are curious about string theory to find books or papers that are effective in explaining it from a perspective that gives insight into its many intricacies. This book is one of the few that does that, and it deserves the highest ranking of any of the books in mathematical physics that are currently in print. The author, a noted contributor to the field, has produced a book that will certainly motivate many to take up the subject of string theory, and these individuals can be introduced to it early in their education, instead of having to wait for the second or third year of graduate school. In addition, professional mathematicians can gain the needed physical insight from the perusal of the book, and then apply their unique talents and perspectives to extending the frontiers of string theory, which, to emphasize again, is a subject that requires a tremendous amount of mathematical knowledge and skill. Hopefully this book will be used in the university so as to give students an appreciation of the most complex and fascinating theories ever constructed in the history of physics. The author's strategy is to introduce the reader to string theory by studying physics in high dimensions. This is done early on, by studying Lorentz invariance in more than three spatial dimensions, and by discussing the notion of `compact' dimensions. In addition, the author studies the quantum-mechanical square well problem with an extra (compact) dimension. This example gives the reader some insight into what can happen to the quantum-mechanical spectrum when a compact dimension is present. Throughout the book, the author makes use of light-cone coordinates, which masks to a large extent the relativistic covariance of the theory, but does have the advantage of making the quantization of the string straightforward. The peculiarities of light-cone coordinates are discussed in some detail, but the author explains them in a way that alleviates any doubt as to their use and physical meaning. The author does devote an entire chapter to the treatment of covariant quantization however. In this discussion the reader will get a first look on how difficult it is to quantize a system with constraints, this giving rise to the famous Virasoro operators. The covariant quantization of strings treats of course all coordinates the same, and this introduces the reader to another surprise from the standpoint of the traditional formalism of quantum mechanics, namely that the usual Hilbert space constructions are not valid, since the st

Highly recommended! Dr. Zwiebach's book is an excellent resource for individuals with at least an undergraduate education in physics who are interested in pursuing string theory and related topics. Advanced students in other disciplines can also benefit with some hard work. It is very well organized, starting with the necessary mathematics and relativistic formalism/notation later used in calculations. The book is very rewarding, leading the student with great detail through derivations and avoiding the common "it can easily be shown that..." statements found in other books. The most enjoyable thing is that you really can begin grasping the basics of string theory and branes. After going through this book (maybe in a one year course) the reader should be prepared enough to start looking at other books such as Hatfield, Polchinski, and Green et. al.