Past Courses: 2018/2019

Title: AdS/CFT and its applications

David Vegh

The course gives a basic introduction to AdS/CFT and discusses its 
applications to condensed matter physics.

The plan is the following:

1) Motivating the correspondence, review of the dictionary
2) AdS/CFT at non-zero temperature: planar black holes in AdS
3) Lifshitz geometries
4) Non-zero chemical potential: AdS-Reissner-Nordstrom solution
5) Fermi surfaces, superconductivity, high-T_c superconductors
6) Holographic non-Fermi liquids
7) Holographic superconductors
8) Translational symmetry breaking
9) Holographic massive gravity


References:

• hep-th/9905111  (MAGOO review)
  
• 1612.07324  (Hartnoll-Lucas-Sachdev)
  
• 0909.0518  (McGreevy)
  
• 0803.3295  (Hartnoll-Herzog-Horowitz)
  
• 0903.2477, 1301.0537

 Schedule:

 11/1/2019 10:30-12:30 G.O. Jones 610

14/1/2019 10:30-12:30 G.O. Jones 610

18/1/2019 10:30-12:30 G.O. Jones 610

 

 

Title: Bosonic String Theory

Rodolfo Russo

The course provides a first introduction to string theory and the basic 

concepts and techniques in 2d CFTs.  

Spending roughly 1h on each topic, the plan is as follows:

1) Classical strings
2) Naive quantisation
3) Basics of 2d CFTs
4) Covariant quantisation and the bc CFT
5) BRST quantisation and the free spectrum
6) The Veneziano amplitude

Thus the lectures will not be exhaustive, but hopefully will make it easier to read the references and will allow the interested students to work out the details independently.

References:

• Green, Schwarz and Witten
• Polchinski
• Blumenhagen, Lust and Theisen

Schedule:

 19/11/2018 15:00-17:00 G.O. Jones 610

 20/11/2018 15:00-17:00 G.O. Jones 610

 26/11/2018 15:00-17:00 G.O. Jones 610