Can you tell me what string theory textbook are you reading,everybody?

[RiverRich]

Just for survey.

 

[robousy]

I am reading Zweibach

 

[dextercioby]

I think he meant Zwiebach's "First Course in String Theory".

Daniel.

 

[RiverRich]

Yea,I see."A First Course in String Theory".
How much did you buy it? I found it at least $40 on froogle .

 

[Kalimaa23]

I've also just purchased Zwiebach. I found it at a local large bookstore/cd place (Fnack) for a good price, which surprised me a little. Not that I'm complaining though.

My promotor gave me Superstring Theory by Green, Schwarz & Witten to start with, but I found it a bit...um...heavy. Zwiebach is a breeze my comparison. I'm actually the one who tipped to prof about it, he didn't consider it before I mentioned it. While attending a conference, he talked about it with a few colleagues, and the consensus was that Zwiebach is the most pedagogical. Plus, he found out that he was referenced in it

 

[selfAdjoint]

Zwiebach is aimed at well-prepared undergraduates or, I would guess, beginning graduate students. He assumes you are cool with (and I do mean cool with) relativity and non-relativistic quantum mechanics. If you have any serious hangups with the mathematical representation of either of these, it will impede your understanding of Zwiebach and slow down your pace until you rectify that.

And then he only does bosonic strings in any detail, and has just overviews of special topics in superstrings and brane theory. If you want more than that you just about have to go on to GSW (both volumes) or Polchinski (ditto).

Given all that, Zwiebach is an excellent book for self-teaching.