Superstring Theory: 25th Anniversary Edition: Volume 1 (Superstring Theory 2 Volume Hardback Set)

No brainer. Like MTW or “The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime”, this is another jewel which beauty and value goes beyond the content. You need up to chapter 16 included of Peskin and or alike to be able to even go through the first chapter though.

I have just finished reading and studying Volume 1 of Green, Schwarz and Witten, it is extremely well written the first four chapters I understood them straight away, the first one gives you an historical introduction into the subject as how strings were used in the early seventies for modeling the strong nuclear force and the Veneziano Amplitude. Details are give as how the different conformal mappings of the string worldsheet can be mapped to the whole plane or half plane (depending wether you have a closed or open string) and how the different values of the points (0,1,infinity) contribute due to the conformal symmetry that the theory has. It is important at this stage to point out that the book by Kiritsis ("String Theory in a Nutshell") does not give you any hint of why the infinite value of the variable does not contribute. But GSW explains it beautiful. The only problem is when you have a Tachyon in which case you have a divergence in the amplitude of scattering on top of dealing with a particle which is nonsensical since it has imaginary mass. The second chapter introduces the Bosonic String, both the open and closed case and the various conditions for the boundaries and vibrational modes propagating on them. Here it is shown that the Bosonic String has a tachyon and that the theory only makes sense in the critical dimension D=26. Also the light-cone gauge and old covariant methods of quantization are presented. Chapter three gives the more new method of BRST quantization, it explains how you construct the BRST charge and that the physical states are anhilated by it. Here are given the action of the ghosts that are brought with the BRST and how they again imply D=26. Chapter four is about the superstring applying supersymmetry to the world-sheet coordinates, the usual SUSY transformations are given for the bosonic coordinates and for the new fermionic ones who happen to be Spinors in the worldsheet. A word of caution the SUSY transformations only close on-shell but then using the superspace technique an auxiliary field is introduced who fixes everything and has no dynamics. Chapter five is about applying Supersymmetry to the spacetime and the problem here is that the book begins to get more involved in the formalism. For example the Superstring now has equations of motion so complicated they can only be resolved in light-cone gauge again the BRST is applied and now as a result we have more ghosts but this time bosonic associated to the fermionic coordinates. With SUSY the tachyon is shown to disappear and the critical dimension is now D=10 for Lorentz invariance and conformal invariance and susy. Chapter 6 deals with the way to incorporate internal gauge degrees of freedom like giving quantum numbers to the two ends of the open string or separating the Fermionic spinors into one which live in one representation and other group in another thus creating the Heterotic String with SO(32) or E8xE8 gauge symmetry. Finally chapter seven is a lot of crap (excuse me) for how you can build the tree amplitudes of scattering for the different strings. AH! and by the way Type I refers to having Supersymmetry with N=1 and 32 supersymmetric charges and Type II (A and B) for SUSY with N=2 and 64 supercharges. Type II A also has left and right chiral fermions while Type II B has only one type of chirality. The amplitudes are presented first for the bosonic open and closed string and then for the Ramond Neveu Schwarz model of the superstring (the approach of chapter 4) and finally the explicit superstring in the spacetime, both superstrings have critical dimension D=10. Here are constructed the various vertex operators that are needed for inserting legs to the string diagrams, the ones for the Bosonic case are more or less self evident but you need to have more care for the Vertex operators of the Fermionic states in the superstring specially in the last case that refers to the strings of chapter 5, some of the last things I just skipped because it gets really awful for a first reading. I am now prepared to delve into the Second Volume specially because on the mathematical side I am already acquainted with most of the differential geometry and algebraic topology which are reviewed in chapters 12 and 15!! (although no algebraic geometry on my wallet!) All in all a great read and the only book that has permitted me to go through the theory of Superstrings in depth although I had already read the half of the undergraduate introductory text of Zwiebach and another one called "String theory demystified" both of them dealing only with the Bosonic string, so this going of Green Schwarz and Witten has been my first attempt to go through the SUPERSTRINGS, so my recommendation, go first with Zwiebach, then MacMahon (demystified) and then with this volume and it will be I hope as it has been to me SUCH A GREAT ADVENTURE!, can wait to read the second volume, these guys (Green, Schwarz, Witten) really know their subject and they do it well, A MUST for any physicist thinking on going as me to go IN Superstrings Theory which by the way is the only theory that has predicted GRAVITY at the quantum level and in a consistent though surprising way, A MUST!!.............

This is a great book, and the costumer service is very good.

Very good condition