Gravity and Strings

Self-contained and comprehensive, this definitive new edition provides a complete overview of the intersection of gravity, supergravity, and superstrings.

Tomás Ortín (Author)

9780521768139, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 March 2015

1048 pages, 43 b/w illus.
25.4 x 18 x 6.3 cm, 1.99 kg

Self-contained and comprehensive, this definitive new edition of Gravity and Strings is a unique resource for graduate students and researchers in theoretical physics. From basic differential geometry through to the construction and study of black-hole and black-brane solutions in quantum gravity - via all the intermediate stages - this book provides a complete overview of the intersection of gravity, supergravity, and superstrings. Now fully revised, this second edition covers an extensive array of topics, including new material on non-linear electric-magnetic duality, the electric-tensor formalism, matter-coupled supergravity, supersymmetric solutions, the geometries of scalar manifolds appearing in 4- and 5-dimensional supergravities, and much more. Covering reviews of important solutions and numerous solution-generating techniques, and accompanied by an exhaustive index and bibliography, this is an exceptional reference work.

1. Differential geometry
2. Symmetries and Noether's theorems
3. A perturbative introduction to general relativity
4. Action principles for gravity
5. Pure N=1,2,d=4 supergravities
6. Matter-coupled N=1,d=4 supergravity
7. Matter-coupled N=2,d=4 supergravity
8. A generic description of all the N>2,d=4 SUEGRAS
9. Matter-coupled N=1,d=5 supergravity
10. Conserved charges in general relativity
11. The Schwarzschild black hole
12. The Reissner–Nordström black hole
13. The Taub–NUT solution
14. Gravitational pp-waves
15. The Kaluza–Klein black hole
16. Dilaton and dilaton/axion black holes
17. Unbroken supersymmetry I: supersymmetric vacua
18. Unbroken supersymmetry II: partially supersymmetric solutions
19. Supersymmetric black holes from supergravity
20. String theory
21. The string effective action and T duality
22. From eleven to four dimensions
23. The type-IIB superstring and type-II T duality
24. Extended objects
25. The extended objects of string theory
26. String black holes in four and five dimensions
27. The FGK formalism for (single, static) black holes and branes
Appendices: A.1 Lie groups, symmetric spaces, and Yang–Mills fields
A.2 The irreducible, non-symmetric Riemannian spaces of special holonomy
A.3 Miscellanea on the symplectic group
A.4 Gamma matrices and spinors
A.5 Kähler geometry
A.6 Special Kähler geometry
A.7 Quaternionic-Kähler geometry.

Subject Areas: Physics [PH], Cosmology & the universe [PGK], Astronomy, space & time [PG], Mathematics & science [P]