Introduction to the special issue dedicated to Michael J. Duff FRS on the occasion of his 70th birthday

Abstract

This special feature, dedicated to Michael J. Duff FRS on the occasion of his 70th birthday, concerns topics in 'Quantum gravity, branes and M-theory'. These three intertwining subjects have been central to Duff's work; indeed many of his contributions have come to define significant aspects of what we actually mean by these terms. From the discovery of Weyl anomalies to recognising superstrings in 10 dimensions as a special case of membranes in an 11-dimensional M-theory, Duff's insights have shaped major developments across these themes. So it is an apposite setting for such a celebration and we are delighted to be able to include in this collection contributions from many of the pioneers of quantum gravity, branes and M-theory. The breadth of these topics has placed little constraint on the multiplicity of ideas appearing in these pages, from astrophysical black holes to chaotic condensed matter. Again, this is fitting as Duff's scientific remit spans a remarkable diversity of motifs, from the fundamentals of M-theory to entanglement in quantum information.

arXiv commentIntroduction to the Proceedings of the Royal Society A special feature "Quantum gravity, branes and M-theory", located at https://royalsocietypublishing.org/topic/special-collections/duff-quantum-gravity, dedicated to Michael J. Duff FRS on the occasion of his 70th birthday. 10 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (44)

• The Holographic Weyl anomaly
• String Solitons
• Embedding AdS Black Holes in Ten and Eleven Dimensions
• Locally Localized Gravity
• Conformal collider physics: Energy and charge correlations
• Twenty Years of the Weyl Anomaly
• Nonperturbative Formulas for Central Functions of Supersymmetric Gauge Theories
• Eleven Dimensional Origin of String/String Duality: A One Loop Test
• Four Dimensional String/String/String Triality
• D=4 Super Yang Mills, D=5 gauged supergravity and D=4 conformal supergravity
• Conformal Anomaly Of Submanifold Observables In AdS/CFT Correspondence
• Evidence for Heterotic/Heterotic Duality
• Anti-de Sitter Black Holes in Gauged N=8 Supergravity
• Trace anomaly driven inflation
• Black and super p-branes in diverse dimensions
• Strong/Weak Coupling Duality from the Dual String
• The Black Branes of M-theory
• Complementarity of the Maldacena and Randall-Sundrum Pictures
• Macroscopic superstrings as interpolating solitons
• Yang-Mills origin of gravitational symmetries
• AdS_5 x S^5 Untwisted
• Four-qubit entanglement from string theory
• Massive String States as Extreme Black Holes
• String triality, black hole entropy and Cayley's hyperdeterminant
• Type II p-branes: the brane-scan revisited
• Black Holes, Qubits and Octonions
• Four-Dimensional String/String Duality
• On the stability of the anomaly-induced inflation
• Gravity as Gauge Theory Squared: A Ghost Story
• The black-hole/qubit correspondence: an up-to-date review
• Evanescent Effects Can Alter Ultraviolet Divergences in Quantum Gravity without Physical Consequences
• E_7 and the tripartite entanglement of seven qubits
• A magic pyramid of supergravities
• New Black Hole, String and Membrane Solutions of the Four-Dimensional Heterotic String
• A magic square from Yang-Mills squared
• Anomalous Transport Due to the Conformal Anomaly
• E_6 and the bipartite entanglement of three qutrits
• Wrapped branes as qubits
• Gravity as the square of Yang-Mills?
• Unruh Acceleration Radiation Revisited
• Electromagnetic Duality and Entanglement Anomalies
• Effective actions for dual massive (super) p-forms
• Black Holes and Higher Composition Laws
• Chris Isham: mentor, colleague, friend