Notes (pdf format) The HET Group

WHAT: This is a series of informal seminars on the AdS/CFT correspondence. The subject is an active field of research which emerged from efforts to build a quantum theory of gravity (string theory) and has found surprising applications in strongly coupled systems. I will give a pedagogical introduction motivating the ideas, developing them and applying them to systems of interest (quark-gluon plasma in heavy ion collisions, condensed matter (superconductors), etc.) over the course of the semester. WHEN: Each Wednesday at 1:15 pm WHERE: Room 405 in Earth & Planetary Sciences Building TEXTBOOKS: String Theory, Vols. I and II, by Joseph Polchinski, Cambridge. D-Branes, by Clifford V. Johnson, Cambridge. String Theory in a Nutshell, by Elias Kiritsis, Princeton. A First Course in String Theory, by Barton Zwiebach, Cambridge. TABLE OF CONTENTS Lecture 1: Path Integral Lecture 2: Schwarzschild Black Hole Lecture 3: Reissner-N\"ordstrom Black Hole Lecture 4: Black Branes from String Theory Lecture 5: Microscopic Calculation of Entropy and Hawking Radiation Lecture 6: AdS/CFT Correspondence Lecture 7: Finite Temperature Lecture 8: Finite Volume and Hawking-Page phase transition Lecture 9: Transport properties

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