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Graduate students typically enter into courses on string theory having little to no familiarity with the mathematical background so crucial to the discipline. As such, this book, based on lecture notes, edited and expanded, from the graduate course taught by the author at SISSA and BIMSA, places particular emphasis on said mathematical background. The target audience for the book includes students of both theoretical physics and mathematics. This explains the book’s "strange" style: on the one hand, it is highly didactic and explicit, with a host of examples for the physicists, but, in addition, there are also almost 100 separate technical boxes, appendices, and starred sections, in which ...
This texbook is based on the author's lecture notes held at Quinzhen College, Tsinghua University, Beijing, renowned for nurturing mathematical prodigies. The book offers a remarkable combination of characteristics that are both exceptional and seemingly contradictory. It is designed to be entirely self-contained, starting from the basics and building a strong foundation in geometric and algebraic tools. Simultaneously, topics are infused with mathematical elegance and profundity, employing contemporary language and techniques. From a physicist's perspective, the content delves deeply into the physical aspects, emphasizing the underlying principles. This book bridges the gap between students...
Adopting an elegant geometrical approach, this advanced pedagogical text describes deep and intuitive methods for understanding the subtle logic of supersymmetry while avoiding lengthy computations. The book describes how complex results and formulae obtained using other approaches can be significantly simplified when translated to a geometric setting. Introductory chapters describe geometric structures in field theory in the general case, while detailed later chapters address specific structures such as parallel tensor fields, G-structures, and isometry groups. The relationship between structures in supergravity and periodic maps of algebraic manifolds, Kodaira-Spencer theory, modularity, and the arithmetic properties of supergravity are also addressed. Relevant geometric concepts are introduced and described in detail, providing a self-contained toolkit of useful techniques, formulae and constructions. Covering all the material necessary for the application of supersymmetric field theories to fundamental physical questions, this is an outstanding resource for graduate students and researchers in theoretical physics.
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"Ideas from quantum field theory and string theory have had an enormous impact on geometry over the last two decades. One extremely fruitful source of new mathematical ideas goes back to the works of Cecotti, Vafa, et al. around 1991 on the geometry of topological field theory. Their tt*-geometry (tt* stands for topological-antitopological) was motivated by physics, but it turned out to unify ideas from such separate branches of mathematics as singularity theory, Hodge theory, integrable systems, matrix models, and Hurwitz spaces. The interaction among these fields suggested by tt*-geometry has become a fast moving and exciting research area. This book, loosely based on the 2007 Augsburg, Ge...
Gromov-Witten theory started as an attempt to provide a rigorous mathematical foundation for the so-called A-model topological string theory of Calabi-Yau varieties. Even though it can be defined for all the Kähler/symplectic manifolds, the theory on Calabi-Yau varieties remains the most difficult one. In fact, a great deal of techniques were developed for non-Calabi-Yau varieties during the last twenty years. These techniques have only limited bearing on the Calabi-Yau cases. In a certain sense, Calabi-Yau cases are very special too. There are two outstanding problems for the Gromov-Witten theory of Calabi-Yau varieties and they are the focus of our investigation.
Mi Fu was a prominent calligrapher in 11th-century China. This analysis of his work considers content and style, and examines his calligraphy within the framework of the artist's life, the Northern Song culture in which he lived and the literati theory of art he helped to formulate.
By the spring of 1998, it had become clear that Italy, after considerable effort, had succeeded in bringing its public finances into line with the Maastricht parameters for joining the European Monetary Union. This was generally viewed as an important success of the Olive Tree coalition government led by Romano Prodi, and a sign that Italian political life had become "normal." Nevertheless, the Bicameral Commission, which should have fostered a radical consitutional reform with the aim to stabilize and strengthen the bipolar structure of the party system and the majoritarian functioning of democracy in Italy, was dismantled in June. Moreover, in October 1998 the Prodi government suddenly collapsed because of the internal opposition of the Neo-Communist wing of its parliamentary majority, a further demonstration that the Italian transition towards a more effective democratic rule is far from complete. David Hine is Fellow and Senior Censor at Christ Church College, Oxford. Salvatore Vassallo is senior civil servant in the Emilia-Romagna regional government's Institutional Affairs Bureau and Professor of Public Policy Analysis at the University of Trento.
"Sartre Today" is a tribute to Jean-Paul Sartre on the centenary of his birth (1905-2005). With twenty-two contributions from leading Sartre scholars in North America and the United Kingdom, this volume will greatly enhance Sartre scholarship in the English-speaking world. The diversity of these chapters reflects the depth and breadth of Sartre's wide-ranging engagement with the political and cultural issues of his time. Yet, as these contributions demonstrate, it is clear that Sartre's work still offers an important framework through which to address contemporary issues of a similar magnitude. This applies to Sartre's enduring contribution to philosophy and his conception of violence and terror, as well as analyses of the latest political events in the United States. Other contributions address Sartre's relationship to the contemporary understanding of neuroscience and group therapy, as well as his conception of literature, biography, the theater and cinema. This rich volume will be of great use not only to all Sartre scholars, but also to anyone who has an interest in modern philosophy, politics, psychology, and literature.