A Concise Course in String Theory

Abstract

These lecture notes offer a concise introduction to string theory, based on a one-semester graduate course taught at Fudan University, and develop the subject from the string sigma model action to the AdS/CFT correspondence. The exposition is deliberately compact, and is addressed to graduate students who seek a coherent overview of the foundations of the subject rather than an exhaustive treatment.

170 pages, no originality claimed; comments are welcome. ; v2 corrections in section 2.2,8.1,9.2,15.2,16.3,16.4 with apology for text overlaps by the first author in v1; v3 implement various improvements; v4 add section for Green-Schwarz anomaly cancellation, and typos corrected; v5 various corrections and expand AdS/CFT section, will be published at World Scientific