String Theory Demystified (Paperback)

by David McMahon (Author)
Key Phrases: string quantization, heterotic string theory, worldsheet currents, String Theory Demystified, Superstring Theory Continued, Relativity Demystified (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

UNRAVEL the mystery of STRING THEORY

Trying to understand string theory but ending up with your brain in knots? Here's your lifeline! This straightforward guide explains the fundamental principles behind this cutting-edge concept.

String Theory Demystified elucidates the goal of the theory--to combine general relativity and quantum theory into a single, unified framework. You'll learn about classical strings, conformal field theory, quantization, compactification, and T duality. The book covers supersymmetry and superstrings, D-branes, the holographic principle, and cosmology. Hundreds of examples and illustrations make it easy to understand the material, and end-of-chapter quizzes and a final exam help reinforce learning.

This fast and easy guide offers:

• Numerous figures to illustrate key concepts
• Sample problems with worked solutions
• Coverage of equations of motion, the energy-momentum tensor, and conserved currents
• A discussion of the Randall-Sundrum model
• A time-saving approach to performing better on an exam or at work

Simple enough for a beginner, but challenging enough for an advanced student, String Theory Demystified is your key to comprehending this theory of everything.

About the Author

David McMahon has worked for several years as a physicist and researcher at Sandia National Laboratories. He is the author of Linear Algebra Demystified, Quantum Mechanics Demystified, Relativity Demystified, MATLAB Demystified, and Complex Variables Demystified, among other successful titles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 306 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional; 1 edition (August 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071498702
• ISBN-13: 978-0071498708
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #39,926 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A playful yet serious textbook on string theory, November 26, 2008

By	Lubos Motl (Cambridge, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I actually love the book, its format, and its focus. Imagine that your task is to take Polchinski's textbook on String Theory and compress both volumes to 320 light pages or so.

You have to include some basics of GR, QFT, abstract classical mechanics but also the CFTs, bosonic strings, light cone gauge, T-duality, symmetries, RNS superstring, heterotic strings, D-branes, AdS/CFT, black holes. But you also add some material that was not yet fully covered in Polchinski's book such as tachyon condensation on D-branes and the speculative field of string cosmology, among others.

I think that if you realize your task well, you will end up with a book very similar to McMahon's book. As a kid or undergrad, I would actually love the playful format of the book, the icons and big headlines. In fact, I like it even now. It's the format that succeeds to attract the reader's attention and give him or her the (semi-realistic) feeling that the knowledge needed to fully master string theory is of encyclopedic character and "learnable" in a finite time.

Although the brevity of many explanations will clearly make it insufficient for all readers to understand the true origin of all results and steps, this is a book focusing on real, solid scientific arguments.

This is a simplified but technical, not popular, book that won't overwhelm you with postmodern philosophical babbling, trying to convince you that it can replace the calculations and lead you instantly to "big" conclusions without any hard work. It is a book that shows the actual correct calculations and derivations, albeit in a simplified form. Most importantly, the answers are pretty much universally correct, as far as I could check, and they uniformly cover the basic topics that are important for actual researchers in modern high-energy theoretical physics.

If you're a college student, high school student, or a mathematically skilled "semi-outsider" who is bright enough to learn advanced theoretical physics, please ignore the other reviewers who clearly have no idea what theoretical physics actually is, and buy this book. You may like it, too.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Very disappointing, September 20, 2008

By	Dr. Lee D. Carlson (Baltimore, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The most challenging part of string theory for those who want to learn it is not the routine calculations and "index gymnastics" that is found in this book but rather the essential meaning and "intuition" behind the mathematics of the theory. As physical theories go, string theory makes unprecedented use of very complicated and esoteric mathematics, coming from fields such as algebraic geometry, algebraic topology, and the theory of several complex variables. The cover of this book promises that the reader will be able to understand the mathematical tools necessary to "decipher" string theory, but it does not make good on these promises.

What the book does rather well is to introduce the reader well versed in relativistic quantum field theory to string theory as it was articulated in the first two decades of its discovery as a theory. Yes, the author does discuss more modern topics in string theory such as D-branes, Chan-Paton indices, the Ads/CFT correspondence, and the holographic principle, but he does so in a manner that does not shed light on the formidable mathematics behind these concepts. The treatment is very cursory and does not prepare the reader for meaningful perusal of the research literature.

There is no discussion for example on the mathematics of Calabi-Yau manifolds, and the accompanying notions of holonomy, mirror symmetry, and orbifolds. There is no in-depth discussion on how non-Abelian gauge symmetries are incorporated into string theory other than what is done in one chapter on heterotic string theory. There is no discussion at all on how to use K-theory to classify D-brane charges. Yes, these are all complex mathematical topics, but it is THESE topics that cause problems for students or those curious about string theory, especially those that are teaching themselves, a readership that this book was supposedly written to target.

This reviewer recommends the book by Becker, Becker, and Schwarz as the best one for addressing some of the "intuition" behind the mathematics of string theory. To get a deep appreciation of this mathematics though will require years of study and searching in the original mathematical literature, some of this going back over a century. It is well worth the time and effort, even if one does not intend to conduct original research in string theory, but instead is passionately curious about what could in terms of its mathematics alone be easily described as the most beautiful theory ever constructed.

4.0 out of 5 stars Great introduction, but not for everybody, July 5, 2009

By	R. Golan (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

First of all, this book is not for everybody. It's not for the pop-science reader, it contains far too much mathematics to be of any use for him. It's not for the professional scientist seeking in-depth understanding either. If you are either type of reader, you're better off reading something else.

Every book has its readership target, and this book found one appreciative reader in this reviewer. I have a background in engineering, so I'm familiar with differential equations, complex analysis, quantum mechanics. I never took any postgrad physics, so given my interest in physics I've had to study tensor analysis, quantum field theory and general relativity on my own. After getting some exposure to those subjects, I felt I could tackle an introduction to strings, and thought this book would be a good way of quickly getting the broad concepts. I found the book easy enough to be readable, and challenging enough to learn something from. If you have a background similar to mine, you will love this book.

If you do have this sort of background, then you'll find it to be a very good summary of string theory. It will give you the broad concepts without skimping on the mathematics. It will prepare you for texts like Zwiebach and Polchinsky.

There are flaws in the book, however. There are still way too many typos in the book, and some of the examples are stepped through in steps that ought to be obvious to anyone at this level, while others are not explained in sufficient detail. The issue of typos seems to be an ongoing one with the Demystified series, but thankfully this particular book seems to suffer from fewer typos than some of the others.

Aside from that, this reviewer found it a very useful introduction to the subject, and would strongly recommend it to anyone in a similar situation. However, it may not be suited to pop-science readers or professionals.