Bosonic String Theory

September 19 - October 31

Institut Henri Poincare

Kellogg Stelle (Imperial College/IHP)

Presently only copies of manuscript notes exist as IHP Lecture notes 32

Part 1 RELATIVISTIC EXTENDED OBJECTS

• Classical relativistic particles, strings and extended objects

• Open and closed string equations of motion and boundary conditions

• Conserved and angular momentum

Part 2 CONFORMAL GAUGE DYNAMICS

• Conformal gauge and its residual symmetries

• Simple rotating solutions

• Anticipation of Regge behaviour

Part 3 GUPTA-BLEULER QUANTISATION

• Analogy to Gupta-Bleuler quantisation of QED
• Mode expansions and commutation relations

Part 4 THE QUANTUM STRING SPECTRUM

• Virasoro constraints

• Low-lying states in the spectrum

Part 5 GHOST DECOUPLING

• Physical, spurious and null states

• Critical dimension and Regge intercept

Part 6 VERTEX OPERATORS

• Conformal invariance

• The Veneziano amplitude

• Mandelstam variables

• S-matrix poles and duality

Part 7 BRST QUANTISATION

• Path-integral derivation of covariant quantisation

• Faddeev-Popov ghosts

• BRST symmetry

• Anomaly cancellation

• BRST cohomology and derivation of the spectrum