How a little string can tell us so much

by Paolo Di Vecchia (Nordita)

Tuesday 24 May 2011, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Stockholm

122:028

Since Nordita is organizing a program on String Phenomenology in the period May 30th-June 26th, 2011 that will be followed by STRING 2011 in Uppsala, this seminar is intended to give a general presentation of string theory to those who are not actively working on string theory. We discuss the development of string theory in its 43 years from hadron physics to a theory consistently unifying all interactions including gravity and its problems in predicting what we observe at present available energies. We then describe the Maldacena conjecture that allows one to study the properties of gauge theories at strong coupling by classical (super)gravity and its applications in various directions.