It Was 20 Years Ago Today. Mike Duff wrote [1, p. 330] about the annus mirabilis…

It Was 20 Years Ago Today. Mike Duff wrote [1, p. 330] about the annus…: "  It Was 20 Years Ago Today. Mike Duff wrote [1, p. 330] about the annus mirabilis 1995 : "Future historians may judge the period 1984-95 as a time when theorists were like boys playing by the sea shore, and diverting themselves with the smoother pebbles or prettier shells of perturbative ten-dimensiorial superstrings while the great ocean of non-perturbative eleven-dimensional M-theory lay all undiscovered before them." But last year Greg Moore had to remind the boys to "Keep true to the dreams of thy youth" [2, section 12]: "Work on formulating the fundamental principles underlying M-theory has noticeably waned. [...] A good start was given by the Matrix theory approach [...but...] it has an important flaw: It has not led to much significant new mathematics. If history is a good guide, then we should expect that anything as profound and far-reaching as a fully satisfactory formulation of M-theory is surely going to lead to new and novel mathematics. Regrettably, it is a problem the community seems to have put aside - temporarily. But, ultimately, Physical Mathematics must return to this grand issue." [1] http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/The+World+in+Eleven+Dimensions [2] http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Physical+Mathematics+and+the+Future Traduzir 11 "

From a post by Urs Schreiber

Physical Mathematics and the Future

This page collects material related to the book collection

• Mike Duff
  The world in eleven dimensions: Supgergravity, Supermembranes and M-theory
  IoP 1999
  (publisher)

that collects and comments key articles in the (pre-)history of M-theory (M-branes in 11-dimensional supergravity) in the 1990s.
For related texts see at books about string theory.

Contents

• 1 Eleven-dimensional supergravity
• 2 The eleven-dimensional supermembrane
• 3 The eleven-dimensional superfivebrane
• 4 M-theory (before M-theory was cool)
• 5 Intersecting branes and black holes
• 6 M-theory and duality

1 Eleven-dimensional supergravity

On 11-dimensional supergravity

2 The eleven-dimensional supermembrane

On the M2-brane

3 The eleven-dimensional superfivebrane

On the M5-brane

4 M-theory (before M-theory was cool)

on M-theory

5 Intersecting branes and black holes

On black branes, black holes in string theory and Bekenstein-Hawking entropy

6 M-theory and duality

On duality in string theory, mostly S-duality and dual heterotic string theory, ending with AdS-CFT
On whether “M” is really for “membrane” after all:

In other words, perhaps D=11 supergravity together with its BPS configurations: plane wave, membrane, fivebrane, KK monopole and the D=11 embedding of the Type II eightbraneare are all there is to M-theory and that we need look no further for new degrees of freedom. (p. 329)

Concluding with:

future historians may judge the period 1984-95 as a time when theorists were like boys playing by the sea shore, and diverting themselves with the smoother pebbles or prettier shells of perturbative ten-dimensiorial superstrings while the great ocean of non-perturbative eleven-dimensional M-theory lay all undiscovered before them. (p.330)

Compare to the situation 20 years later as in

• Greg Moore, Physical Mathematics and the Future, talk at Strings 2014

whith its section 12: “Keep true to the dreams of thy youth: M-theory”

category: reference

Revised on August 8, 2015 08:42:35 by Urs Schreiber (88.128.80.106)

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