|
Physical Society Colloquium
Mina Aganagic Harvard University Duality is the driving force of all recent developments in string theory. Two of the best-known string theory dualities are mirror symmetry and open/closed string duality. Mirror symmetry relates topologically distinct pairs of Calabi-Yau manifolds, where quantum geometry of one manifold is related to classical geometry of the dual. Mirror symmetry has physical applications to studying the vacuum structure of quantum field theories embedded in string theory, but also mathematical applications in enumerative geometry. In this talk, I will review some aspects of mirror symmetry in the context of closed strings, as well as some very recent results for open strings. Dualities relating open and closed strings are important since (i) open string theory provides a non-perturbative definition of closed string theory, and (ii) closed string theory describes the large N behavior of open string theories. A well known example of this kind of duality is the AdS/CFT correspondence. I will describe another, very explicit realization of open/closed string duality that arises in the context of Calabi-Yau compactifications and which is relevant for four-dimensional N=1 supersymmetric U(N) Yang-Mills theory.
>Wednesday, March 6th 2002, 13:30 |