Unity from duality: gravity, gauge theory and strings

C. Bachas, A. Bilal, M. Douglas, N. Nekrasov, F. David, Constantin P. Bachas, Adel Bilal, Michael R. Douglas, N.A. Nekrasov, Francois David9783540002765, 3540002766

In a distilled and pedagogical fashion, the contributions to this volume of the famous summer school in Les Houches cover the recent developments in supersymmetric string theory, the gauge theory/string theory correspondence and string duality. Further chapters deal with quantum gravity and D-brane geometry. Black hole mechanics and cosmology are treated too, as well as the AdS-CFT correspondence. The book is a comprehensive introduction to the recent developments in string/M-theory and quantum gravity. It addresses graduate students in physics and astrophysics.