by Marcos Mariño, Oxford University Press. Hardback ISBN 0198568495 £49.50.
One of the most important examples of string theory/gauge theory correspondence relates Chern-Simons theory – a topological gauge theory in three dimensions that describes knot and three-manifold invariants – to topological string theory. This book gives the first coherent presentation of this and other related topics. After an introduction to matrix models and Chern-Simons theory, it describes the topological string theories that correspond to these gauge theories and develops the mathematical implications of this duality for the enumerative geometry of Calabi-Yau manifolds and knot theory. It will be useful reading for graduate students and researchers in both mathematics and physics.
