String Theory, Vol. 2: Superstring Theory and Beyond

Cambridge Monographs on Mathematical Physics

by Joseph Polchinski, Peter Landshoff (Editor), D.R. Nelson (Editor)

String theory has advanced rapidly over the last 15 years and is increasingly seen as the best, and perhaps only, route to the complete unification of the four fundamental forces--the so-called theory of everything. This text provides, in two volumes, a thoroughly modern and comprehensive introduction to strings and superstrings, and brings the reader up to date on the latest developments in string duality, M-theory, D-branes, and the application of string theory to black hole quantum mechanics. The author is one of the world's top string theorists, and is also known as a clear and cogent writer. The two volumes are written at a level appropriate to graduate students in physics. This is the first major textbook on strings since the two volume work of Green, Schwartz and Witten 10 years ago (which sold extraordinarily well, reprinting within a month of publication). The main market for the book is theoretical physicists, particle physicists, astrophysicists, cosmologists and applied mathematicians. However, this is an accessible book on one of the most fundamental questions in physics by a top researcher. It has all the ingredients to be a best seller.

Genres: Physics, Science, Textbooks, Nonfiction, Theory, Mathematics

553 pages, Unknown Binding

First published October 13, 1998

About the author

Joseph Polchinski was an American theoretical physicist and string theorist.

Reviews

[G.R. Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had abandoned this book in disgust for several weeks, but I finally got back to it yesterday afternoon and finished the damn thing. Then I went round to one of my ex-lovers (I suppose I should be tactful for once and not mention his name, but he's quite well known in the string theory community), and yelled at him a bit about the crap he and his colleagues are trying to pass off as science. So he started saying in that snooty way string theorists have that I obviously didn't get it, and I told him I did so, and he opened it at random and asked me what that equation meant then, and it turned out that neither of us could figure it out. I said something really cheap and sarcastic, and he kind of lost it completely, but I was still holding the book so I hit him with it. It's a pretty handy weapon. Then one thing led to another. I guess we're back together again now or something.

Executive summary: can provide effective foreplay with the right person, but use at own risk.

[Joe Baldoni Karlik · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very pleased with Vol 1 so I’m sorry to say I can’t recommend Vol 2. The first few chapters are fairly good where the author excels in the very things they did in Vol 1 (ie detailed worldsheet theory derivation and string perturbations) however, the text really starts to go off the rails quickly. Where this book is really weak is on supergravity and Calabi-Yau but as these are really important topics on which so much else is built, the holes in the treatment are cumulative and by halfway through is reads more like a survey of results than an actual resource for learning how those results come about. The text makes frequent reference to the appendix whenever it requires a result from supergravity but the appendix, though long, is fairly unintelligible and says very little usually just citing really important pieces of the overall structure of string theory making no attempt to justify these things. If these were of secondary relevance to the topics at hand, that would be one thing, but these results are cited again and again to the harm of the book overall. And by Polchinski gets to Calabi-Yau theory, any pretense of actually learning this material is dropped and the author admits that they will just reference results. I ultimately sought other better resources after being disappointed with Vol 2 (I’d recommend Becker, Becker, and Schwarz). Of Vol 2, I can only recommend the first 2-3 chapters.