By Horatiu Nastase
Cambridge University Press
This book provides an introduction to various methods developed in string theory to tackle problems in condensed-matter physics. This is the field where string theory has been most largely applied, thanks to the use of the correspondence between anti-de Sitter spaces (AdS) and conformal field theories (CFT). Formulated as a conjecture 20 years ago by Juan Maldacena of the Institute for Advanced Study, the AdS/CFT correspondence relates string theory, usually in its low-energy version of supergravity and in a curved background space–time, to field theory in a flat space–time of fewer dimensions. This correspondence is holographic, which means in some sense that the physics in the higher dimension is projected onto a flat surface without losing information.
The book is articulated in four parts. In the first, the author introduces modern topics in condensed-matter physics from the perspective of a string theorist. Part two gives a basic review of general relativity and string theory, in an attempt to make the book as self-consistent as possible. The other two parts focus on the applications of string theory to condensed-matter problems, with the aim of providing the reader with the tools and methods available in the field. Going into more detail, part three is dedicated to methods already considered as standard – such as the pp-wave correspondence, spin chains and integrability, AdS/CFT phenomenology and the fluid-gravity correspondence – while part four deals with more advanced topics that are still in development, including Fermi and non-Fermi liquids, the quantum Hall effect and non-standard statistics.
Aimed at graduate students, this book assumes a good knowledge of quantum field theory and solid-state physics, as well as familiarity with general relativity.
