String Theory and M-Theory: A Modern Introduction

String theory is one of the most exciting and challenging areas of modern theoretical physics. This book guides the reader from the basics of string theory to recent developments. It introduces the basics of perturbative string theory, world-sheet supersymmetry, space-time supersymmetry, conformal field theory and the heterotic string, before describing modern developments, including D-branes, string dualities and M-theory. It then covers string geometry and flux compactifications, applications to cosmology and particle physics, black holes in string theory and M-theory, and the microscopic origin of black-hole entropy. It concludes with Matrix theory, the AdS/CFT duality and its generalizations. This book is ideal for graduate students and researchers in modern string theory, and will make an excellent textbook for a one-year course on string theory. It contains over 120 exercises with solutions, and over 200 homework problems with solutions available on a password protected website for lecturers at www.cambridge.org/9780521860697.

Katrin Becker is a Professor of Physics at Texas A & M University. She has been awarded the Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard University in 2006 and received the Alfred Sloan Fellowship in 2003.

Melanie Becker is a Professor of Physics at Texas A & M University. In 2006 she has been awarded an Edward, Frances and Shirley B. Daniels Fellowship from the Radcliffe Fellowship for Advanced studies at Harvard University. In 2001 she received the Alfred Sloan Fellowship.

John Schwarz is Harold Brown Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He is a MacArthur Fellow and member of the National Academy of Sciences.