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It has been said that `String theorists talk to string theorists and everyone else wonders what they are saying'. This book will be a great help to those researchers who are challenged by modern quantum field theory.
Quantum field theory experienced a renaissance in the late 1960s. Here, participants in the Les Houches sessions of 1970/75, now key players in quantum field theory and its many impacts, assess developments in their field of interest and provide guidance to young researchers challenged by these developments, but overwhelmed by their complexities.
The book is not a textbook on string theory, rather it is a complement to Polchinski's book on string theory. It is a survey of current problems which have their origin in quantum field theory.
List of contents
Correlation Functions through Variational Methods.- Reader's Guide to String Duality and Matrix Theory.- An Introduction to Equivariant Cohomology.- Hopf Algebras, Renormalization and Noncommutative Geometry.- The Peierls Bracket.- Gauge Theory without Ghosts and Quantum Gravity without Ghosts.- Quantized Branes and Symmetries of String Theory.- Instructive History of the Quantum Inverse Scattering Method.- The Electron is Inexhaustible.- Exact Solution of Random Tiling Models.- Dimensionally Reduced Chern-Simons Terms and their Solutions.- BPS Branes in Supergravity.- Selected Topics in Perturbative Field Theory: Renormalization, Differential Algebras.- Lectures on Random Matrices and Hall's Fluids.- Renormalization and Renormalization Group: From the Discovery of UV Divergences to the Concept of Effective Field Theories.- Les Houches 1970: List of Participants.- Les Houches 1975: List of Participants.
Summary
Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute, Les Houches, France, 15-26 June 1998
