Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of inserts
- Preface
- 1 Overview and overture
- 2 Relativistic strings
- 3 A closer look at the world-sheet
- 4 Strings on circles and T-duality
- 5 Background fields and world-volume actions
- 6 D-brane tension and boundary states
- 7 Supersymmetric strings
- 8 Supersymmetric strings and T-duality
- 9 World-volume curvature couplings
- 10 The geometry of D-branes
- 11 Multiple D-branes and bound states
- 12 Strong coupling and string duality
- 13 D-branes and geometry I
- 14 K3 orientifolds and compactification
- 15 D-branes and geometry II
- 16 Towards M- and F-theory
- 17 D-branes and black holes
- 18 D-branes, gravity and gauge theory
- 19 The holographic renormalisation group
- 20 Taking stock
- References
- Index
16 - Towards M- and F-theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of inserts
- Preface
- 1 Overview and overture
- 2 Relativistic strings
- 3 A closer look at the world-sheet
- 4 Strings on circles and T-duality
- 5 Background fields and world-volume actions
- 6 D-brane tension and boundary states
- 7 Supersymmetric strings
- 8 Supersymmetric strings and T-duality
- 9 World-volume curvature couplings
- 10 The geometry of D-branes
- 11 Multiple D-branes and bound states
- 12 Strong coupling and string duality
- 13 D-branes and geometry I
- 14 K3 orientifolds and compactification
- 15 D-branes and geometry II
- 16 Towards M- and F-theory
- 17 D-branes and black holes
- 18 D-branes, gravity and gauge theory
- 19 The holographic renormalisation group
- 20 Taking stock
- References
- Index
Summary
As we saw in chapter 12, there is an extremely tantalising picture of the fate of string theory at strong coupling, obtained using certain ‘duality’ transformations. In fact, D-branes were rather useful, as they allowed for an explicit constructive method for finding evidence of the products of duality, for example exhibiting stable states which must exist – with special properties – on both sides of the duality.
One major task is to try to understand how to write better formulations of the physics of strong coupling. There are two main goals to be achieved by this. The first is simply to find better ways of finding new and interesting backgrounds (vacua) for string theory, with techniques which allow for better handing of strongly coupled regions of the solution. The second is to attempt to find the ‘correct’ manner in which to describe the complete M-theory from which all string theories are supposed to arise as weakly coupled limits.
Both ‘Matrix theory’ and ‘F-theory’ are ideas in these directions, putting together the strongly coupled brane and string data in ways which allow for new geometric ways of describing and connecting string vacua, and giving insights into the next generation of formulations of the physics. In this chapter we shall uncover aspects of both, while learning much more about the properties of various branes.
The type IIB string and F-theory
One of the remarkable dualities which we observed in chapter 12 was the ‘self-duality’ of the type IIB superstring theory.
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- D-Branes , pp. 367 - 408Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002