vi
Preface
Organization
The text is organized on three levels: the main content (augmented with examples),
computations and remarks. The latter two levels can be omitted in a first lecture.
The examples, computations and remarks are clearly separated from the text
(respectively, by a half-box on the left and bottom, by a vertical line on the left
and by italics) to help the navigation.
Many computations have been set aside from the main text to avoid breaking
the flow and to provide the reader with the opportunity to check by themself
first. In some occasions, computations are postponed well below the corresponding
formula to gather similar computations or to avoid breaking an argument. While the
derivations contain more details than usual textbooks and may look pedantic to the
expert, I think it is useful for students and newcomers to have complete references
where to check each step. This is even more the case when there are many different
conventions in the literature. The remarks are not directly relevant to the core of the
text, but they make connections with other parts or topics. The goal is to broaden
the perspectives of the main text.
General references can be found at the end of each chapter to avoid overloading
the text. In-text references are reserved for specific points or explicit quotations (of
a formula, a discussion, a proof, etc.) I did not try to be exhaustive in the citations
and I have certainly missed important references: this should be imputed to my lack
of familiarity with them and not to their value.
During the lectures, additional topics have been covered in tutorials, which can
be found online (together with corrections):
https://www.physik.uni-muenchen.de/lehre/vorlesungen/wise_17_18/sft_ws_17_18/
exercises_sft/index.html.
My plan is to frequently update this book with new content. The last version of
the draft can be accessed on my professional webpage, currently located at:
http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~erbin/.
Acknowledgements
I have started to learn string field theory at HRI by attending lectures from Ashoke
Sen. Since then, I have benefited from collaboration and many insightful discussions
with him. Following his lectures has been much helpful in building an intuition that
cannot be found in papers or reviews on the topic. Through this book, I hope being
able to make some of these insights more accessible.
I am particularly grateful to Ivo Sachs who proposed me to teach this course
and to Michael Haack for continuous support and help with the organization, and
to both of them for many interesting discussions during the two years I have spent
at LMU. Moreover, I have been very lucky to be assigned an excellent tutor for this
Preface
Organization
The text is organized on three levels: the main content (augmented with examples),
computations and remarks. The latter two levels can be omitted in a first lecture.
The examples, computations and remarks are clearly separated from the text
(respectively, by a half-box on the left and bottom, by a vertical line on the left
and by italics) to help the navigation.
Many computations have been set aside from the main text to avoid breaking
the flow and to provide the reader with the opportunity to check by themself
first. In some occasions, computations are postponed well below the corresponding
formula to gather similar computations or to avoid breaking an argument. While the
derivations contain more details than usual textbooks and may look pedantic to the
expert, I think it is useful for students and newcomers to have complete references
where to check each step. This is even more the case when there are many different
conventions in the literature. The remarks are not directly relevant to the core of the
text, but they make connections with other parts or topics. The goal is to broaden
the perspectives of the main text.
General references can be found at the end of each chapter to avoid overloading
the text. In-text references are reserved for specific points or explicit quotations (of
a formula, a discussion, a proof, etc.) I did not try to be exhaustive in the citations
and I have certainly missed important references: this should be imputed to my lack
of familiarity with them and not to their value.
During the lectures, additional topics have been covered in tutorials, which can
be found online (together with corrections):
https://www.physik.uni-muenchen.de/lehre/vorlesungen/wise_17_18/sft_ws_17_18/
exercises_sft/index.html.
My plan is to frequently update this book with new content. The last version of
the draft can be accessed on my professional webpage, currently located at:
http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~erbin/.
Acknowledgements
I have started to learn string field theory at HRI by attending lectures from Ashoke
Sen. Since then, I have benefited from collaboration and many insightful discussions
with him. Following his lectures has been much helpful in building an intuition that
cannot be found in papers or reviews on the topic. Through this book, I hope being
able to make some of these insights more accessible.
I am particularly grateful to Ivo Sachs who proposed me to teach this course
and to Michael Haack for continuous support and help with the organization, and
to both of them for many interesting discussions during the two years I have spent
at LMU. Moreover, I have been very lucky to be assigned an excellent tutor for this