Friday, August 24, 2007

More advanced string theory lectures

Some wholesale copy and paste from the Scitalks blog which I've been contributing to over the last few weeks. I'll be taking a more active role next week too. In the series of posts on string theory video material, working up from pop-science through to basic introductory lectures, to more advanced topics I gave the following suggestion:

First I will give some ideas for lectures which are mostly in my area, the AdS/CFT correspondence.

Eric D'Hoker's lectures from TASI are great.

Though I would suggest that just about every lecture from TASI is worth watching. I haven't seen them all but most of the lecturers are really very good. I've been watching Mina Aganigic's lectures on topological string theory which are very good. David Tong's lectures on vortices, monopoles and kinks were excellent in 2005 and I would imagine they are still both entertaining and clear.

Also on AdS/CFT those by Mark Van Raamsdonk at the PIMS are good.

But again, the level of this school is just right for those who have are just about familiar with the previous material.

I can't view these lectures by Juan Maldacena who first developed the AdS/CFT correspondence but they may well be good.

I've seen Eva Silverstein talk a couple of times on string cosmology. She's one of the leading researchers on the subject. Again, I haven't seen this particular video of her but she's usually a good, clear speaker:

A little old now (2004) but still excellent is this workshop on QCD and string theory from UCSB, and the conference here.

My work is most closely linked to Rob Myers' talks on holographic mesons.

Trying to give a broad range of stringy subjects, the lectures on string phenomenology are here.

More on stringy cosmology here.

and some of the more mathematical aspects here.

As before I haven't seen all these videos but I've seen a few from each conference and can say that there are certainly some which are worth watching. We really need more, interested people to watch them and then advise which are the best. I'm just giving a general selection of some of the more cutting edge areas of the subject.

Note that there's a big jump between the previous set of lectures and this set. There's really a gulf between learning the basics and understanding the more advanced topics which is why a full length online course would be excellent.

Anyway, I'll be posting something about, eh, me, soon over at Scitalks to give some context to me work in the subject.

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