Quantum Strings and Superstrings

These are the lecture notes of the introductory String Theory course held by one of the authors for the master program of Theoretical Physics at Turin University. The world-sheet approach to String Theory is pedagogically introduced in the framework of the bosonic string and of the superstring.

In this article we present a comprehensive account of the operator formulation of the Green-Schwarz superstring in the semi-light-cone (SLC) gauge, where the worldsheet conformal invariance is preserved. Starting from the basic action, we systematically study the symmetry structure of the theory in the SLC gauge both in the Lagrangian and the phase space formulations. After quantizing the theory in the latter formulation we construct the quantum Virasoro and the super-Poincar...

We discuss a covariant functional integral approach to the quantization of the bosonic string. In contrast to approaches relying on non-covariant operator regularizations, interesting operators here are true tensor objects with classical transformation laws, even on target spaces where the theory has a Weyl anomaly. Since no implicit non-covariant gauge choices are involved in the definition of the operators, the anomaly is clearly separated from the issue of operator renorma...

The different aspects of superstring phenomenology before and after 1995 are briefly reviewed. (Contribution to the conference SUSY97)

In these proceedings for the First School on Field Theory and Gravitation (Vit\'oria, Brasil), a brief introduction is given to superstring theory and its duality symmetries. This introduction is intended for beginning graduate students with no prior knowledge of string theory.

We construct complete sets of (open and closed string) covariant coherent state and mass eigenstate vertex operators in bosonic string theory. By minimally extending the standard definition of coherent states so as to include the string theory requirements, we show that the naive construction of the the closed string coherent states requires the existence of a lightlike compactification of spacetime. When the null winding states in the underlying Hilbert space are projected o...

We present a new approach to the quantization of the superstring. After a brief review of the classical Green-Schwarz formulation for the superstring and Berkovits' approach to its quantization based on pure spinors, we discuss our formulation without pure spinor constraints. In order to illustrate the ideas on which our work is based, we apply them to pure Yang-Mills theory. In the appendices, we include some background material for the Green-Schwarz and Berkovits formulatio...

BRST-methods provide elegant and powerful tools for the construction and analysis of constrained systems, including models of particles, strings and fields. These lectures provide an elementary introduction to the ideas, illustrated with some important physical applications.

We give an elementary introduction to classical and quantum bosonic string theory.

In this article, we investigate the supersymmetric c=1 model of superstring theory and demonstrate how the spectrum of states is expanded and new symmetries of the theory are generated by the existence of ghost cohomologies. As a result, we establish significant connections between two-dimensional supergravity and physical theories in higher dimensions. Additionally, we provide a comprehensive guide for constructing BRST-invariant and nontrivial vertex operators and carry out...