A First Course in String Theory 2nd Edition by Barton Zwiebach (PDF)

Description

String theory made understandable. Barton Zwiebach is once again faithful to his goal of making string theory accessible to undergraduates. He presents the main concepts of string theory in a concrete and physical way to develop intuition before formalism, often through simplified and illustrative examples. Complete and thorough in its coverage, this new edition now includes AdS/CFT correspondence and introduces superstrings. It is perfectly suited to introductory courses in string theory for students with a background in mathematics and physics. New sections cover strings on orbifolds, cosmic strings, moduli stabilization, and the string theory landscape. Now with almost 300 problems and exercises, with password-protected solutions for instructors at www.cambridge.org/zwiebach.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I approached this book in two parts. First, I went through the first half of the book which is about Physics in various dimensions like Very Special Relativity, Electromagnetism and Gravity., The it passes to the mechanics of the relativistic classical particle, its quantization, the mechanics of classical string and finally their quantization. The author works in the Light-cone gauge formalism and uses the Nambu-Goto action of the string. A good overview of the main facts about the bosonic string is given through out the following chapters, the first half or first part of this book ends on chapter 14 with an introduction to Superstrings. Then I jumped straight to the last two chapters 24 and 25 which are about string interactions and Riemann surfaces and Loop amplitudes in string theory. Here I must point out that he only does the stuff for open strings, I guess because the theory for Riemann surfaces and therefore tree and one loop amplitudes for closed strings is more involved mathematically. But it was nice to see in working action the Schwarz -Christoffel conformal mapping. Then I left this book for a while and only after going through several more books on the subject decided to came back on it for the second part which is called “Developments”. Now for this part it is also the best and probably the only accesible introduction to the subject of D-branes, string charges, Non-linear Dirac – Born – Infeld electrodynamics and it even has a chapter which I am about to finish now that makes the contact between string phenomenology and the particle content of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics which is not easy at all, using the so called or at least he calls them Brane color which when 3 of them together generate U(3)=SU(3)xU(1) gauge fields, the gluons, that couple to one of the open strings end which represent the quarks and 2 left branes together generate the U(2)=SU(2)xU(1) gauge group of the electroweak part of the SM. This is the INTRODUCTION you MUST go through in order to begin to understand D-branes, it also touches on T-duality and the AdS/CFT correspondence, the book is like his author professor Barton Zwiebach at the MIT, simply brilliant!

⭐This is a long and careful buildup of the mathematical machinery of string theory, patiently developing the tools theorists use to work this subject. The book is carefully laid out and shows the high quality materials which can be achieved when a text is developed out of a real course tested with real students over a period of time. It is an introduction to string theory which leaves no term undefined, no basic undeveloped but brings the student to the threshold of current research in a logical sequence. I find it easy to read and follow Zwiebach’s style of writing.However, this is not a ‘popular’ book. There are such ‘popular’ books which attempt to give some elements of string theory or other contemporary physics or cosmology but fail miserably. A classroom text won’t have that problem. (To see an example how NOT to communicate string theory to anyone, take a look at “The Little Book of String Theory” by Steven Gubser of Princeton, which substitutes analogies about dancing for real teaching, and is of little value to readers of any background.)No one should make the mistake the Zwiebach book is for the general reader – it is not. Don’t be misled that it is an undergraduate course text; true, but an MIT advanced undergraduate text, for elite MIT physics pre-professionals who are at the level of graduate students elsewhere. Also their preparation is extensive and uniform. The book is perfectly understandable for the physics student on a PhD track and already familiar with electromagnetism, relativity and quantum mechanics. But not otherwise. For example, there is a one page review of the variational principle of least action in mechanics; no one who hasn’t studied this before is going to learn it in one page. Besides the target audience of professional-track MIT students, the book may be accessible for self study by physicists and engineers working in other fields who want to understand what all the shouting is about and are willing to put in the time and concentration. The second edition corrects numerous errors and misprints of the first edition which could cause much puzzlement otherwise.It is a lot of work to develop a polished text like this and many universities unfortunately do not really reward research faculty for doing so. MIT is different and Prof. Zwiebach has received well deserved honors for producing the course and the book. As string theory is one of the frontier intellectual explorations of humankind in our generation, it is a worthy subject to learn and to teach.

⭐Barton gives a group of lectures based on this book. Go to the Perimeter Institute and you can find his lectures. I have taken courses in OFT, General Relativity and String theory. This book is great for learning String Theory and is one of the best.I want to talk about something else this book does. The reason I said what courses I have taken, is this book has one other consequence. It refines the skills you already have. Had I read this book first before OFT I would have really been ahead of the game. The people I know who read this book first had a much easier time with OFT.He does the action integrals without the Euler-Lagrange equation. Any time a book refines your skills beyond the subject it is teaching, is a really good book. Others have pointed out how good it is at teaching string theory. I just wanted to point out other benefits of the book.Even if string theory turns out to be wrong, this book will make you a better Physicist. Remember to go online and watch some of his lectures. His lectures make reading the book boring, because you feel you have seen it all before and that is good.

⭐Excellent, absolutely five stars. If one wants to start string theory from an elementary perspective then this is the place to start and there is no better book than this book. This has to be one of the best ever physics text for advanced undergraduates

⭐String theory is considered to be an extremely difficult branch of Physics. The greatness of this book is making this difficult subject easy to understand. Zweibach is an accomplished string theorist and has made many important contributions to the subject. This book shows that he is not just a great researcher but a great teacher also. The book begins with basic concepts of relativity and electrodynamics. These subjects are generalized to a space with more than three spatial dimensions. The first five chapters are introductory and prepare the ground for string theory which is introduced in the sixth chapter. The second part of the book deals with current areas of research into the subject such as AdS/CFT correspondence, String theory and black holes and the relation of string theory to Particle Physics.

⭐For undergards or new grads who only know basic physics (classical mech, E&M, SR) this is a great book to get a feel of what string theory is. Even I, as a second year masters with some QFT experience, liked to read it before diving into a more advanced book just to learn the ideas without really wondering about the formalism. Of course you will not learn to do computations in string theory by reading this book but you will get familliar with the words and concepts really quickly. The first part covers classical strings and lightcone quantization of strings (only with Nambu-Gotto action) while introducing the ideas of QFT. Regular books spend a very short amount of time on that so it’s nice to see it in more details. The second part covers more advanced material, like D-brane dynamics and dualities. It even introduces the AdS/CFT correspondnce. Overall I recommend this book to everyone interested in string theory, no matter the level. Beginners don’t be scared and specialists maybe care to take a look.

⭐Per chi vuole avere una “infarinatura” di Teoria delle Stringhe ed è almeno al terzo anno di Fisica, può e DEVE comprare questo libro.L’autore è chiarissimo, commenta moltissimo e non dà nulla per scontato. Nulla.Ci sono anche degli esercizietti molto semplici “in itinere” (oltre a quelli a fine capitolo) chiamati “Quick Calculations” e sono utili e “simpatici”.Consiglio caldamente questo volume, che può essere affiancato e usato come “propedeuticità” al ben noto libro di Green, Schwarz e Witten.

⭐Not found.

⭐This book is amazing. I like this good. But the book I got via Amazon was a bit old with brownish pages and a bit torn on the corners.But a book is a book so I do not bother about the page quality that much

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