Strings 2010: Schedule of Talks

[arivero]

here available

http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/Conference.html

And list of speakers:
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/speakers.html

 

[marcus]

here available

http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/Conference.html

And list of speakers:
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/speakers.html

Arivero, I mentioned the schedule of talks a couple of days ago in another thread. It certainly deserves to be broadcast, but the information still seems incomplete.
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2585212#post2585212
The list of speakers has been available for a month or so. They have a lot of big names on board this time!
But so far I do not find the titles of the talks. Do you? There is a "schedule of talks" that just gives timeslots, labeled "talk".
So one sees a list that says "talk, talk, talk, talk,..." but this gives no titles.

The schedule page gives a link that purports to be to titles, but so far this link does not go anywhere. Is this a problem with my computer? Do you get titles of talks?

 

[arivero]

So one sees a list that says "talk, talk, talk, talk,..."

Indeed

More seriosly, I tryed SPIRES for a few of the names in the speaker list, but I didn't get any insight.

 

[marcus]

Finally on 22 Feb, a page listing some titles of talks has been posted, however most of the talks are "TBA".
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/TitleofTalks.html
The conference starts three weeks from today.
I'm interested to see what proportion of the talks are only periferally related to extra-dimensions unification and qg (core superstring/M).
And what fraction are mainly about other stuff---like LHC, applications of string math to superconductivity, future of empirical particle physics, Horava-Lifgarbagez 4d gravity...

So far there is so much TBA ("to be announced") that it is hard to form an impression.
==quote==

Talks at Strings 2010:

Nima Arkani-Hamed (IAS Princeton)
TBA
Jan de Boer (U. of Amsterdam)
TBA
Mirjam Cvetic (U. of Pennsylvania)
TBA
Michael Dine (UC Santa Cruz)
TBA
Lance J. Dixon (SLAC)
Perturbative Ultraviolet Behavior of N=8 Supergravity
Nadav Drukker (Humboldt U., Berlin)
TBA
John Ellis (CERN)
Searching for new physics at the LHC
Jerome P. Gauntlett (Imperial College)
Holographic Superconductors in M-Theory
Davide Gaiotto (IAS Princeton)
TBA
Jaume Gomis (Perimeter Institute)
TBA
Michael B. Green (Cambridge U.)
TBA
Christopher P. Herzog (Princeton U.)
Holographic Superconductors with Pencil and Paper
Gary Horowitz (UC Santa Barbara)
Recent Developments in Holographic Superconductors
Shamit Kachru (KITP, Santa Barbara)
New Horizons in AdS/CFT
Vladimir Kazakov (ENS and Paris U. VI-VII)
Y-system for the spectrum of planar AdS/CFT: news and checks
Igor Klebanov (Princeton U. )
Branes with Topological Charges and AdS/CFT
Jan Louis (Hamburg U.)
Spontaenous N=2 -> N=1 supersymmetry breaking
Dieter Lüst (Max Planck Institute & ASC Munich)
Supersymmetry breaking on generalized geometries
Juan Maldacena (IAS Princeton)
TBA
Dario Martelli (King's College)
TBA
Liam McAllister (Cornell U. )
Nonperturbative Contributions to D3-brane Potentials
Ilarion V. Melnikov (AEI Potsdam)
Linear sigma models and heterotic moduli spaces
Gregory W. Moore (Rutgers U.)
TBA
Nikita Nekrasov (IHES)
TBA
Hirosi Ooguri (CALTECH)
TBA
Joseph Polchinski (KITP, Santa Barbara)
TBA
Fernando Quevedo (Cambridge U. & CERN)
TBA
Natalia Saulina (Perimeter Institute)
TBA
Sakura Schafer-Nameki (KITP, Santa Barbara)
TBA
Ashoke Sen (Harish-Chandra I. )
TBA
Savdeep Sethi (Chicago U. EFI)
TBA
Eva Silverstein (KITP, Santa Barbara )
TBA
Andrew Strominger (Harvard U.)
TBA
Leonard Susskind (Stanford U.)
TBA
Yuji Tachikawa (IAS Princeton)
TBA
Washington Taylor (MIT)
TBA
Johannes Walcher (CERN)
TBA
Steven Weinberg (U. of Texas, Austin)
TBA
Edward Witten ( IAS Princeton)
TBA
Xi Yin (Harvard, U.)
TBA
==endquote==

 

[marcus]

http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/TitleofTalks.html
The conference starts 20 days from now.
I'm interested to see what proportion of the talks turn out to be only marginally related to core superstring/M---in other words to extra-dimensions, unification, and qg.
And what fraction will be mainly about other stuff---like LHC, applications of string math to superconductivity, future of empirical particle physics, Horava-Lifgarbagez 4d gravity, string math applied to nuclear physics,...

So far we know 14 out of the total list of 40 titles.
==quote==

Talks at Strings 2010:

Nima Arkani-Hamed (IAS Princeton)
TBA
Jan de Boer (U. of Amsterdam)
TBA
Mirjam Cvetic (U. of Pennsylvania)
TBA
Michael Dine (UC Santa Cruz)
Symmetries in String Theory
Lance J. Dixon (SLAC)
Perturbative Ultraviolet Behavior of N=8 Supergravity
Nadav Drukker (Humboldt U., Berlin)
TBA
John Ellis (CERN)
Searching for new physics at the LHC
Jerome P. Gauntlett (Imperial College)
Holographic Superconductors in M-Theory
Davide Gaiotto (IAS Princeton)
TBA
Jaume Gomis (Perimeter Institute)
TBA
Michael B. Green (Cambridge U.)
TBA
Christopher P. Herzog (Princeton U.)
Holographic Superconductors with Pencil and Paper
Gary Horowitz (UC Santa Barbara)
Recent Developments in Holographic Superconductors
Shamit Kachru (KITP, Santa Barbara)
New Horizons in AdS/CFT
Vladimir Kazakov (ENS and Paris U. VI-VII)
Y-system for the spectrum of planar AdS/CFT: news and checks
Igor Klebanov (Princeton U. )
Branes with Topological Charges and AdS/CFT
Jan Louis (Hamburg U.)
Spontaenous N=2 -> N=1 supersymmetry breaking
Dieter Lüst (Max Planck Institute & ASC Munich)
Supersymmetry breaking on generalized geometries
Juan Maldacena (IAS Princeton)
TBA
Dario Martelli (King's College)
TBA
Liam McAllister (Cornell U. )
Nonperturbative Contributions to D3-brane Potentials
Ilarion V. Melnikov (AEI Potsdam)
Linear sigma models and heterotic moduli spaces
Gregory W. Moore (Rutgers U.)
TBA
Nikita Nekrasov (IHES)
TBA
Hirosi Ooguri (CALTECH)
TBA
Joseph Polchinski (KITP, Santa Barbara)
TBA
Fernando Quevedo (Cambridge U. & CERN)
TBA
Natalia Saulina (Perimeter Institute)
TBA
Sakura Schafer-Nameki (KITP, Santa Barbara)
TBA
Ashoke Sen (Harish-Chandra I. )
TBA
Savdeep Sethi (Chicago U. EFI)
TBA
Eva Silverstein (KITP, Santa Barbara )
TBA
Andrew Strominger (Harvard U.)
The Kerr-Fermi Sea
Leonard Susskind (Stanford U.)
TBA
Yuji Tachikawa (IAS Princeton)
TBA
Washington Taylor (MIT)
TBA
Johannes Walcher (CERN)
TBA
Steven Weinberg (U. of Texas, Austin)
TBA
Edward Witten ( IAS Princeton)
TBA
Xi Yin (Harvard, U.)
TBA
==endquote==

 

[marcus]

To get a sense of how the wind is blowing, take a look at the beautiful paper by
Hartman, Song, and Strominger, which Strominger will be presenting in his talk at next month's Strings 2010.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.4265
The Kerr-Fermi Sea
17 pages, 1 figure
(Submitted on 21 Dec 2009)
"The presence of a massive scalar field near a Kerr black hole is known to produce instabilities associated with bound superradiant modes. In this paper we show that for massive fermions, rather than inducing an instability, the bound superradiant modes condense and form a Fermi sea which extends well outside the ergosphere. The shape of this Fermi sea in phase space and various other properties are analytically computed in the semiclassical WKB approximation. The low energy effective theory near the black hole is described by ripples in the Fermi surface. Expressions are derived for their dispersion relation and the effective force on particles which venture into the sea."

There are a couple of speculative references to stringy papers: "this could be related to so-and-so [Kerr/CFT] but it's not sure how that would work out..." that kind of thing.

I admire Strominger in part because of the frank honest way he spoke out at Toronto Strings 2005.

Arivero I remember a couple of times you have used the phrase "silver bridge"---for an attractive escape route out of core string research. What may be shaping up here is a festival of the silver bridges---like a trade fair in which each of the leading masters shows his best exit strategy
How best to segue out of the extra dimensions imbroglio.

Or it could be this in part, but mixed with other trends. It is going to be interesting.

As I recall Susskind and anthropic multiverses were frozen out of Madrid 2007, Geneva 2008, and Rome 2009. Landscape talk was kept at an absolute minimum as I recall--at least in 2008 and 2009. But back here in the Good Ole Home territory of College Station---proud site of the Texas Agriculture and Mechanics (A&M) college, what happens?
They let Susskind back on board to give a talk! Will it be about the Multiverse? Will we be back in the Landscape again?

 

[arivero]

Arivero I remember a couple of times you have used the phrase "silver bridge"---for an attractive escape route out of core string research. What may be shaping up here is a festival of the silver bridges---like a trade fair in which each of the leading masters shows his best exit strategy
How best to segue out of the extra dimensions imbroglio.

Regretly there is still a lot of ADS/CFT.

I am not sure if they need a silver bridge (this is a military term, for escape during a battle) or simply a way out of the forest. They have some trained guides, but no real motivation to follow any of them particularly.

As you know, I am now in the belief that there is an exit route: to add an infinitesimal 12th dimension to M-theory so you are in a even dimension and with the right charges for Kaluza Klein compactification of the standard model (this is because the 12th amounts basically to B-L charge). Then use M-theory to simultaneusly be aware of: -

• B-L in dimension 12
• SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) in dimension 11 and SU(3)xU(1) with one broken supersymmetry
• chiral fermions in dimension 10 (the ones in 12 have the same quantum numbers in R and L)
• flavour from SO(32) or E8xE8

I can identify some authors who could be in good shape for such exit route. Of course Witten did lead the rediscovery of the multiple roles of dimension 11. M Cvetic has a lot of joint work with Pope, and her AdS work is around the spaces used in Kaluza Klein. N=8 Supergravity and its breaking to N=1 is present in Aloff Wanach spaces (the ones with SU(3)xU(1)) so training and work in this area also could make contact with the way out.

Not sure if the right methaphor is a forest or a mine. It seems that some drilling work is still needed.

Last but not least, a model, from AdS/QCD or whatever, where a "hadronic" string is able to emit a "diquark" string should be very interesting because it amounts to a decay of barionic strings into a pair of "diquark" and "quark" strings. And a model with both kinds of strings has the property I call sBootstrapping, very close to N=1 supersymmetry. It is the only personal motivation I feel to keep looking a bit into the AdS/QCD bussiness, but I would prefer to go back to the age of Susskind and Schwarz and Ramond, when the string was inherently hadronic.

 

[marcus]

Regretly there is still a lot of ADS/CFT.

I am not sure if they need a silver bridge (this is a military term, for escape during a battle) or simply a way out of the forest. They have some trained guides, but no real motivation to follow any of them particularly.

...I can identify some authors who could be in good shape for such exit route...

Not sure if the right metaphor is a forest or a mine. It seems that some drilling work is still needed...

You point to many interesting alternatives! I want to see how the talks sort out and whether any of the speakers explore directions similar to those you suggest. Fascinating business! Now we know 16 out of the total list of 40 titles.

==quote==

Talks at Strings 2010:

Michael Dine (UC Santa Cruz)
Symmetries in String Theory
Lance J. Dixon (SLAC)
Perturbative Ultraviolet Behavior of N=8 Supergravity
Nadav Drukker (Humboldt U., Berlin)
A supermatrix model for ABJM theory
John Ellis (CERN)
Searching for new physics at the LHC
Jerome P. Gauntlett (Imperial College)
Holographic Superconductors in M-Theory
Christopher P. Herzog (Princeton U.)
Holographic Superconductors with Pencil and Paper
Gary Horowitz (UC Santa Barbara)
Recent Developments in Holographic Superconductors
Shamit Kachru (KITP, Santa Barbara)
New Horizons in AdS/CFT
Vladimir Kazakov (ENS and Paris U. VI-VII)
Y-system for the spectrum of planar AdS/CFT: news and checks
Igor Klebanov (Princeton U. )
Branes with Topological Charges and AdS/CFT
Jan Louis (Hamburg U.)
Spontaenous N=2 -> N=1 supersymmetry breaking
Dieter Lüst (Max Planck Institute & ASC Munich)
Supersymmetry breaking on generalized geometries
Liam McAllister (Cornell U. )
Nonperturbative Contributions to D3-brane Potentials
Ilarion V. Melnikov (AEI Potsdam)
Linear sigma models and heterotic moduli spaces
Andrew Strominger (Harvard U.)
The Kerr-Fermi Sea
Washington Taylor (MIT)
Global aspects of the 6D supergravity landscape

==endquote==

 

[marcus]

Now we know 18 out of the total list of 40 titles. It's beginning to be a fair sample.
I will color blue the ones I suspect are not primarily about core string theory. So far they seem very much in the minority (most talks are stringy, as is to be expected). Please let me know if you think I'm misclassifying any of them.

==quote==

Talks at Strings 2010:

Michael Dine (UC Santa Cruz)
Symmetries in String Theory
Lance J. Dixon (SLAC)
Perturbative Ultraviolet Behavior of N=8 Supergravity
Nadav Drukker (Humboldt U., Berlin)
A supermatrix model for ABJM theory
John Ellis (CERN)
Searching for new physics at the LHC
Petr Horava (UC & LBL Berkeley)
Quantum Gravity with Anisotropic Scaling
Jerome P. Gauntlett (Imperial College)
Holographic Superconductors in M-Theory
Christopher P. Herzog (Princeton U.)
Holographic Superconductors with Pencil and Paper
Gary Horowitz (UC Santa Barbara)
Recent Developments in Holographic Superconductors
Shamit Kachru (KITP, Santa Barbara)
New Horizons in AdS/CFT
Vladimir Kazakov (ENS and Paris U. VI-VII)
Y-system for the spectrum of planar AdS/CFT: news and checks
Igor Klebanov (Princeton U. )
Branes with Topological Charges and AdS/CFT
Jan Louis (Hamburg U.)
Spontaenous N=2 -> N=1 supersymmetry breaking
Dieter Lüst (Max Planck Institute & ASC Munich)
Supersymmetry breaking on generalized geometries
Dario Martelli (King's College)
Interpolating geometries and gauge/gravity duality
Liam McAllister (Cornell U. )
Nonperturbative Contributions to D3-brane Potentials
Ilarion V. Melnikov (AEI Potsdam)
Linear sigma models and heterotic moduli spaces
Andrew Strominger (Harvard U.)
The Kerr-Fermi Sea
Washington Taylor (MIT)
Global aspects of the 6D supergravity landscape

==endquote==
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/TitleofTalks.html

 

[atyy]

Petr Horava (UC & LBL Berkeley)
Quantum Gravity with Anisotropic Scaling

Apart from Horava-Lifschitz gravity, there is also anisotropic scaling in string theory.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.3841
http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.1725
http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.1061

 

[marcus]

Apart from Horava-Lifschitz gravity, there is also anisotropic scaling in string theory.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.3841
http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.1725
http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.1061

thanks for pointing that out, Atyy! However it is Horava who is giving the talk on anisotropic scaling QG, and his work so far has been primarily on Horava-Lifgarbagez gravity. The focus is primarily 4D.

So I will consider what you said but assume his talk will be mainly 4D unless I hear something different.

BTW I sampled your links. The Kachru paper says (page 3)
"Henceforth, we will focus on the case...(appropriate ...); so we will be studying gravity in four dimensions."

This is the link http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.1725 that you gave. It tends to confirm my suspicion that top people in the string community (like Kachru) are tending to shift interest away from ten or eleven dimensions and more in the direction of 4D.

Your link to the Polchinski paper http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.1061 bears this out:

"For concreteness, and with a view to ultimately connecting to interesting experimental systems, we focus on 2+1 dimensional field theories, with 3+1 dimensional bulk duals." (page 8)

Later in the paper they pay their respects to extra dimensions by showing possible ways to embed what they've been doing in a string context. But here we have Polchinski and Eva Silverstein focusing on a 4D bulk.

Of course Kachru, Polchinski, Silverstein are some of the most prominent string folks around. So your links provide interesting straws-in-the-wind.

Bears out the general trend we've seen earlier with Witten, Horava, Verlinde, Nicolai.

 

[atyy]

Later in the paper they pay their respects to extra dimensions by showing possible ways to embed what they've been doing in a string context. But here we have Polchinski and Eva Silverstein focusing on a 4D bulk.

Of course Kachru, Polchinski, Silverstein are some of the most prominent string folks around. So your links provide interesting straws-in-the-wind.

Bears out the general trend we've seen earlier with Witten, Horava, Verlinde, Nicolai.

Well, perhaps that should go under what you call string math to QCD and condensed matter then. But then everything with AdS/CFT or gauge/gravity duality should be blue too (or are there attempts to get the standard model of particle physics/cosmology out of AdS/CFT?). Maybe only Saulina's and Schafer-Nameki's talks will be really trying to make unification work, as opposed to studying a very interesting toy model of quantum gravity.

 

[marcus]

What I've emphasized in the post you are responding to is the 4D trend in recent work by some top string folks. The tendency to give up on "extra dimensions". A few prominent people seem to be shifting focus in several different ways but all involve giving up the large number of compactified extra dimensions that were so prevalent a few years back.

You may be able to see this trend reflected in other talks. If some of the others are primarily 4D, then please point them out and I'll highlight them.

 

[atyy]

What I've emphasized in the post you are responding to is the 4D trend in recent work by some top string folks. The tendency to give up on "extra dimensions". A few prominent people seem to be shifting focus in several different ways but all involve giving up the large number of compactified extra dimensions that were so prevalent a few years back.

You may be able to see this trend reflected in other talks. If some of the others are primarily 4D, then please point them out and I'll highlight them.

Well, I'm not thinking so much 4D as you are, perhaps there a more dramatic non-stringyness than that. While the papers I mentioned are still self-professedly stringy, the Kerr/CFT work you highlight above is, I believe, avowedly agnostic about strings.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.4266
"It is an occasional misconception, however, that the existence of holographic dualities is contingent on the validity of string theory. This is not the case. ...... When holographic duality was used to find the microscopic origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy for a class of black holes, the construction at first appeared to depend heavily on details of string theory. However, it was later understood to apply to essentially any consistent, unitary quantum theory of gravity containing the black holes as classical solutions. ...... For that to be determined we would need an ultraviolet completion (for example string theory) of quantum gravity on the Kerr background. However the information about the central charge, together with the assumption of unitarity, turns out to be exactly enough to compute the extreme Kerr entropy"

 

[marcus]

Well, I'm not thinking so much 4D as you are, perhaps there a more dramatic non-stringyness than that...

Perhaps there are other ex-string trends showing up. But I'm content to watch for something mundane and simple---top people getting into work that does not involve extra spatial dimensions.

Witten working on 3D gravity.
Verlinde connecting ordinary 4D gravity with thermodynamics
Nicolai on 4D unification
Horava-Lifgarbagez primarily 4D
Strominger's purely 4D Kerr-Fermi Sea paper to be delivered at Strings 2010.

Here's Strominger's paper http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.4265. It has the same title as the name of his talk so I guess that's what he is presenting.

While the papers I mentioned are still self-professedly stringy, the Kerr/CFT work you highlight above is, I believe, avowedly agnostic about strings.

The Kerr-Fermi Sea paper does not mention strings anywhere and it is pure straight 4D. Explicitly so. See equations 3.3 or 3.10. I guess the highlighted "Kerr/CFT work" you refer to must be that paper.
I'd say though that Strominger's Kerr-Fermi Sea paper does not avow anything about strings---for the simple reason that it does not mention string theory. I suppose if it could avow something, the paper would avow apathy and disinterest

Atyy, you have a really interesting quote from an earlier Strominger paper!
http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.4266
"It is an occasional misconception, however, that the existence of holographic dualities is contingent on the validity of string theory. This is not the case. ...... When holographic duality was used to find the microscopic origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy for a class of black holes, the construction at first appeared to depend heavily on details of string theory. However, it was later understood to apply to essentially any consistent, unitary quantum theory of gravity containing the black holes as classical solutions. ...... For that to be determined we would need an ultraviolet completion (for example string theory) of quantum gravity on the Kerr background. However the information about the central charge, together with the assumption of unitarity, turns out to be exactly enough to compute the extreme Kerr entropy"It could be that I am overlooking a bunch of AdS/CFT papers, about, say, superconductivity. It could be that they are part of the move out of string theory. And maybe I should color some blue. Something you said suggested this. But I'd like to see the abstracts, so as to be more sure. Right now I want to stick to the criterion that something should not rely on imagining extra spatial dimensions, whether compactified or "brane". Are some of these superconductivity papers actually 4D? (or 5D, no need to quibble.)

 

[atyy]

I guess the highlighted "Kerr/CFT work" you refer to must be that paper.

Oh, I see I misread your earlier post and the Kerr-Fermi paper - I thought it was related to the Kerr/CFT paper, but I see it's not. Anyway, the quote is worth the tangent.

It could be that I am overlooking a bunch of AdS/CFT papers, about, say, superconductivity. It could be that they are part of the move out of string theory. And maybe I should color some blue. Something you said suggested this. But I'd like to see the abstracts, so as to be more sure. Right now I want to stick to the criterion that something should not rely on imagining extra spatial dimensions, whether compactified or "brane". Are some of these superconductivity papers actually 4D? (or 5D, no need to quibble.)

Take say Horowitz's http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.1722 "The four dimensional bulk theory (2) is dual to a 2+1 dimensional boundary theory. ... I should emphasize that at the moment we are not trying to derive the gravitational theory from string theory. ... However, we will see later that this simple model can, in fact, be realized as a consistent truncation of string theory. ... This has now been extended to a full description by two different groups. Gauntlett et al. [16] realized the m2 = -2, q = 2 model in M theory. In other words, they found a consistent truncation of eleven dimensional supergravity in which the four dimensional fields were just a metric, Maxwell field and charged scalar with this mass and charge. Gubser et al. [26] realized the same model in one higher dimension (a five dimensional bulk which is dual to a 3+1 dimensional superconductor) with m2 = -3, q = 2 in type IIB string theory. Both groups used Sasaki-Einstein compactifications with U(1) symmetry, where the charged scalar is related to the size of the U(1) fibration." (Gauntlett et al http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.3796, Gubser et al http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.3510) So would Horowitz's paper be 4D or not by your definition?

 

[marcus]

Take say Horowitz's http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.1722... So would Horowitz's paper be 4D or not by your definition?

Atyy thanks for this very useful reference! I have not classified these "superconductivity" papers because I don't feel familiar enough with the subject. I do see that one of the talks at the conference is going to be:

Gary Horowitz (UC Santa Barbara)
Recent Developments in Holographic Superconductors

and you have steered me to a recent arxiv paper that gives a good idea of what the talk will be like!
http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.1722
Introduction to Holographic Superconductors
Gary T. Horowitz
34 pages, 10 figures
(Submitted on 9 Feb 2010)
"These lectures give an introduction to the theory of holographic superconductors. These are superconductors that have a dual gravitational description using gauge/gravity duality. After introducing a suitable gravitational theory, we discuss its properties in various regimes: the probe limit, the effects of backreaction, the zero temperature limit, and the addition of magnetic fields. Using the gauge/gravity dictionary, these properties reproduce many of the standard features of superconductors. Some familiarity with gauge/gravity duality is assumed. A list of open problems is included at the end."

I'm not able to "render an opinion" right now but I will have a look. I suspect what I'm seeing is that this year there are more papers on application of string math to interesting nuclear and condensed physics, fewer papers striving to capture the fundamental laws of nature and reveal the wellsprings of the standard model and all that.

And if the keynote is applications of AdS/CFT then according to your Strominger quote that doesn't specifically require a stringy basis of reality. It is mathematics that can work in 2D, 3D and 4D apparently as a straightforward math tool.

But I'm only in a position to speculate at this point. Eventually I hope the conference site will post the abstracts of the talks. We'll get a solider impression of what's happening, on balance.

I'll bring along the Strominger quote, from Atyy post #14:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.4266
"It is an occasional misconception, however, that the existence of holographic dualities is contingent on the validity of string theory. This is not the case. ...... When holographic duality was used to find the microscopic origin of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy for a class of black holes, the construction at first appeared to depend heavily on details of string theory. However, it was later understood to apply to essentially any consistent, unitary quantum theory of gravity containing the black holes as classical solutions. ...... For that to be determined we would need an ultraviolet completion (for example string theory) of quantum gravity on the Kerr background. However the information about the central charge, together with the assumption of unitarity, turns out to be exactly enough to compute the extreme Kerr entropy"

 

[marcus]

Conference starts 15 March, less than 2 weeks away.
But still only 18 talks have their titles posted at the official website:
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/TitleofTalks.html
out of a planned total of 40 talks.
Michael Dine gives the first talk on Monday. Leonard Susskind will give the final talk on Friday.
Both have made a big deal in the past about the String Landscape---the 10⁵⁰⁰ different vacua or versions of physics. Susskind advocating application of anthropic considerations, Dine applying statistics and probabilisitic reasoning. Neither played a part in Strings 2008 and Strings 2009. So there may be a change of emphasis.

 

[marcus]

Listing the titles of talks by what days they are scheduled on. Days have around 8 timeslots on average (Wednesday's a short day because there's a barbecue in the afternoon.)

Monday
1. Michael Dine (UC Santa Cruz)
Symmetries in String Theory
5. Nadav Drukker (Humboldt U., Berlin)
A supermatrix model for ABJM theory
9. John Ellis (CERN)
Searching for new physics at the LHC

Tuesday
2. Andrew Strominger (Harvard U.)
The Kerr-Fermi Sea
9. Washington Taylor (MIT)
Global aspects of the 6D supergravity landscape

Wednesday
1.Gary Horowitz (UC Santa Barbara)
Recent Developments in Holographic Superconductors
2. Jerome P. Gauntlett (Imperial College)
Holographic Superconductors in M-Theory
4. Christopher P. Herzog (Princeton U.)
Holographic Superconductors with Pencil and Paper
6. Ilarion V. Melnikov (AEI Potsdam)
Linear sigma models and heterotic moduli spaces

Thursday
2. Jan Louis (Hamburg U.)
Spontaenous N=2 -> N=1 supersymmetry breaking
3. Dieter Lüst (Max Planck Institute & ASC Munich)
Supersymmetry breaking on generalized geometries
7. Petr Horava (UC & LBL Berkeley)
Quantum Gravity with Anisotropic Scaling
8. Lance J. Dixon (SLAC)
Perturbative Ultraviolet Behavior of N=8 Supergravity

Friday
2. Dario Martelli (King's College)
Interpolating geometries and gauge/gravity duality
3. Vladimir Kazakov (ENS and Paris U. VI-VII)
Y-system for the spectrum of planar AdS/CFT: news and checks
4. Shamit Kachru (KITP, Santa Barbara)
New Horizons in AdS/CFT
5. Liam McAllister (Cornell U.)
Nonperturbative Contributions to D3-brane Potentials
6. Igor Klebanov (Princeton U. )
Branes with Topological Charges and AdS/CFT
7. Leonard Susskind (Stanford U.)
concluding talk


The schedule:
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/Conference.html
The titles:
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/TitleofTalks.html

 

[marcus]

6 days to go. The plan is to have 41 talks. Of these, titles for 21 have been posted. Three titles just appeared today, including Maldacena's---scheduled as the first talk on Friday.

FRIDAY
1. Juan Maldacena (IAS Princeton)
Minimal surfaces in Anti-de-Sitter, Wilson loops and scattering amplitudes

7. Leonard Susskind (Stanford U.)
Eternal Inflation and Holography

TUESDAY
8. Ashoke Sen (Harish-Chandra I. )
Black holes and discrete symmetry

 

[amyfrog]

Do strings annihilate each other to form the diffraction pattern? And are string photon's considered energy of quis-energy of the 10th dimenisonal compactification of the big C.

 

[tom.stoer]

I am missing something like "current status, main open questions, ...". Does anybody know if anybody will present such an overview?

 

[marcus]

Tom, that's a good point. We haven't seen that listed yet in the program. Yet in the past the annual Strings conference has had that kind of overview talk.
Like David Gross giving the final wrap-up talk at Strings 2007 Madrid.
And likewise at Strings 2008 Geneva, and an opening survey talk in 2009 in Rome.

I expected that Susskind was going to do it this year because they put him at the end, the last thing on Friday.
But it looks like I was wrong. He's going to talk about "eternal inflation" (a minority topic).

Maybe someone else knows and will be able to answer your question. There should be a survey talk, but I haven't seen anything about one so far.

======================
edit REPLY TO NEXT POST:

But how central are the "multiverse discussions" to the majority of string researchers?

Multiverse talk was either minimized or kept entirely out of the Strings conferences Madrid 2007, Geneva 2008, Rome 2009.

The vacuum-counters do not look to me like a majority of the community, longterm.
However, they may look prominent this time, at College Station, Texas. We'll see how that plays.

 

[MTd2]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.1347

On the Topological Phases of Eternal Inflation

Yasuhiro Sekino, Stephen Shenker, Leonard Susskind
(Submitted on 6 Mar 2010)
Eternal inflation is a term that describes a number of different phenomena which have been classified by Winitzki. According to Winitzki's classification these phases can be characterized by the topology of the percolating structures in the inflating, "white," region. In this paper we discuss these phases, the transitions between them, and the way they are seen by a "Census Taker"; a hypothetical observer inside the non-inflating, "black," region. We discuss three phases that we call, "black island," "tubular," and "white island." The black island phase is familiar, comprised of rare Coleman De Luccia bubble nucleation events. The Census Taker sees an essentially spherical boundary, described by the conformal field theory of the FRW/CFT correspondence. In the tubular phase the Census Taker sees a complicated infinite genus structure composed of arbitrarily long tubes. The white island phase is even more mysterious from the black side. Surprisingly, when viewed from the non-inflating region this phase resembles a closed, positively curved universe which eventually collapses to a singularity. Nevertheless, pockets of eternal inflation continue forever. In addition there is an "aborted" phase in which no eternal inflation takes place. Rigorous results of Chayes, Chayes, Grannan and Swindle establish the existence of all of these phases, separated by first order transitions, in Mandelbrot percolation, a simple model of eternal inflation.

******************

Not a minor talk. This is a central issue to the multiuniverse discussions.

 

[marcus]

Update: Conference starts < 5 days from now. Titles for 24 talks have been posted, out of a planned 41. Days tend to have 8 or more timeslots (Wednesday's a short day because there's a barbecue in the afternoon.)

Monday
1. Michael Dine (UC Santa Cruz)
Symmetries in String Theory
4. Jaume Gomis (Perimeter Institute)
The Virtue of Defects in Gauge Theories and 2d CFTs
5. Nadav Drukker (Humboldt U., Berlin)
A supermatrix model for ABJM theory
9. John Ellis (CERN)
Searching for new physics at the LHC

Tuesday
2. Andrew Strominger (Harvard U.)
The Kerr-Fermi Sea
7.Jan de Boer (U. of Amsterdam)
(Non) geometric Aspects of Black Hole Microstates
8. Ashoke Sen (Harish-Chandra I. )
Black holes and discrete symmetry
9. Washington Taylor (MIT)
Global aspects of the 6D supergravity landscape
10. Mirjam Cvetic (U. of Pennsylvania)
Non-perturbative effects for Type II and F-theory vacua

Wednesday
1.Gary Horowitz (UC Santa Barbara)
Recent Developments in Holographic Superconductors
2. Jerome P. Gauntlett (Imperial College)
Holographic Superconductors in M-Theory
4. Christopher P. Herzog (Princeton U.)
Holographic Superconductors with Pencil and Paper
6. Ilarion V. Melnikov (AEI Potsdam)
Linear sigma models and heterotic moduli spaces

Thursday
2. Jan Louis (Hamburg U.)
Spontaenous N=2 -> N=1 supersymmetry breaking
3. Dieter Lüst (Max Planck Institute & ASC Munich)
Supersymmetry breaking on generalized geometries
7. Petr Horava (UC & LBL Berkeley)
Quantum Gravity with Anisotropic Scaling
8. Lance J. Dixon (SLAC)
Perturbative Ultraviolet Behavior of N=8 Supergravity

Friday
1. Juan Maldacena (IAS Princeton)
Minimal surfaces in Anti-de-Sitter, Wilson loops and scattering amplitudes
2. Dario Martelli (King's College)
Interpolating geometries and gauge/gravity duality
3. Vladimir Kazakov (ENS and Paris U. VI-VII)
Y-system for the spectrum of planar AdS/CFT: news and checks
4. Shamit Kachru (KITP, Santa Barbara)
New Horizons in AdS/CFT
5. Liam McAllister (Cornell U.)
Nonperturbative Contributions to D3-brane Potentials
6. Igor Klebanov (Princeton U. )
Branes with Topological Charges and AdS/CFT
7. Leonard Susskind (Stanford U.)
Eternal Inflation and Holography


The schedule:
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/Conference.html
The titles:
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/TitleofTalks.html

 

[marcus]

Conference starts < 4 days from now. Titles for 32 talks have been posted, out of a planned 41.

Monday
1. Michael Dine (UC Santa Cruz)
Symmetries in String Theory
2. Gaiotto TBA
3. Yuji Tachikawa (IAS Princeton)
2d CFTs from 4d N=2 gauge theories
4. Jaume Gomis (Perimeter Institute)
The Virtue of Defects in Gauge Theories and 2d CFTs
5. Nadav Drukker (Humboldt U., Berlin)
A supermatrix model for ABJM theory
6. Moore TBA
7. Yin TBA
8. Quevedo TBA
9. John Ellis (CERN)
Searching for new physics at the LHC

Tuesday
1. Hirosi Ooguri (CALTECH)
Instability with Chern-Simons Terms
2. Johannes Walcher (CERN)
Compact Open Topological String
3. Sethi TBA
4. Nikita Nekrasov (IHES)
The uses of Omega-backgrounds
5. Witten TBA
6. Andrew Strominger (Harvard U.)
The Kerr-Fermi Sea
7.Jan de Boer (U. of Amsterdam)
(Non) geometric Aspects of Black Hole Microstates
8. Ashoke Sen (Harish-Chandra I. )
Black holes and discrete symmetry
9. Washington Taylor (MIT)
Global aspects of the 6D supergravity landscape
10. Mirjam Cvetic (U. of Pennsylvania)
Non-perturbative effects for Type II and F-theory vacua

Wednesday
1.Gary Horowitz (UC Santa Barbara)
Recent Developments in Holographic Superconductors
2. Jerome P. Gauntlett (Imperial College)
Holographic Superconductors in M-Theory
3. Joseph Polchinski (KITP, Santa Barbara)
Semi-holographic Fermi Liquids
4. Christopher P. Herzog (Princeton U.)
Holographic Superconductors with Pencil and Paper
5. Silverstein TBA
6. Ilarion V. Melnikov (AEI Potsdam)
Linear sigma models and heterotic moduli spaces

Thursday
1. Arkani-Hamed TBA
2. Jan Louis (Hamburg U.)
Spontaenous N=2 -> N=1 supersymmetry breaking
3. Dieter Lüst (Max Planck Institute & ASC Munich)
Supersymmetry breaking on generalized geometries
4. Sakura Schafer-Nameki (KITP, Santa Barbara)
F-theory GUTs in Three Steps
5. Natalia Saulina (Perimeter Institute)
Compact F-theory GUT's with PQ symmetry
6. Weinberg TBA
7. Petr Horava (UC & LBL Berkeley)
Quantum Gravity with Anisotropic Scaling
8. Lance J. Dixon (SLAC)
Perturbative Ultraviolet Behavior of N=8 Supergravity
9. Michael B. Green (Cambridge U.)
String Dualities and Ultraviolet Behaviour of Supergravity

Friday
1. Juan Maldacena (IAS Princeton)
Minimal surfaces in Anti-de-Sitter, Wilson loops and scattering amplitudes
2. Dario Martelli (King's College)
Interpolating geometries and gauge/gravity duality
3. Vladimir Kazakov (ENS and Paris U. VI-VII)
Y-system for the spectrum of planar AdS/CFT: news and checks
4. Shamit Kachru (KITP, Santa Barbara)
New Horizons in AdS/CFT
5. Liam McAllister (Cornell U.)
Nonperturbative Contributions to D3-brane Potentials
6. Igor Klebanov (Princeton U. )
Branes with Topological Charges and AdS/CFT
7. Leonard Susskind (Stanford U.)
Eternal Inflation and Holography

For convenience in updating, the 9 remaining TBAs are
Gaiotto
Moore
Yin
Quevedo
Sethi
Witten
Silverstein
Arkani-Hamed
Weinberg


The schedule:
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/Conference.html
The titles:
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/TitleofTalks.html [/QUOTE]

 

[arivero]

For convenience in updating, the 9 remaining TBAs are

Gaiotto (IAS Princeton)
Moore (Rutgers U.)
Yin (Harvard, U.)
Quevedo (Cambridge U. & CERN)
Sethi (Chicago U. EFI)
Witten (IAS Princeton)
Silverstein (KITP, Santa Barbara )
Arkani-Hamed (IAS Princeton)
Weinberg (U. of Texas, Austin)


IAS gets the record of latecomers! Probably because most latecomers are compulsory guests (In both senses: they are expected to come and organisers are expected to include them) and IAS has a bunch of them.

 

[MTd2]

But how central are the "multiverse discussions" to the majority of string researchers?

Because they are running out of ideas. Even susskind jumped into the multiverse bandwagon. So, keeping that in mind is important to have a further excuse to bring money coming into their research.

Same goes to non stringy talks this year, like Weinberg's and Horava's. One must keep the mind open just in case no one takes string theory seriously anymore.

 

[arivero]

Same goes to non stringy talks this year, like Weinberg's and Horava's. One must keep the mind open just in case no one takes string theory seriously anymore.

Only Horava's. I guess Weinberg is just a case of hospitality; the conference this year is very near of Austin.

 

[marcus]

Gaiotto (IAS Princeton)
Moore (Rutgers U.)
Yin (Harvard, U.)
Quevedo (Cambridge U. & CERN)
Sethi (Chicago U. EFI)
Witten (IAS Princeton)
Silverstein (KITP, Santa Barbara )
Arkani-Hamed (IAS Princeton)
Weinberg (U. of Texas, Austin)


IAS gets the record of latecomers! Probably because most latecomers are compulsory guests (In both senses: they are expected to come and organisers are expected to include them) and IAS has a bunch of them.

What a distinction for IAS Princeton! I think they may have heard your insightful comment, or one like it from another direction. Witten and Gaiotto have now done their colleagues the honor of saying what they plan to talk about.

Davide Gaiotto (IAS Princeton)
Towards a classification of four dimensional N=2 gauge theories

Edward Witten (IAS Princeton)
From Gauge Theory To Integrability And Liouville Theory

Gregory W. Moore (Rutgers U.)
Say ''Halo!'' to new walls and new indices

Fernando Quevedo (Cambridge U. & CERN)
Phenomenological Implications of Toric Singularities

Xi Yin (Harvard, U.)
High Spin Gauge Theory and Holography

++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There are left only four unannounced.

Sethi (Chicago U. EFI)
Silverstein (KITP, Santa Barbara)
Arkani-Hamed (IAS Princeton)
Weinberg (U. of Texas, Austin)

http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/TitleofTalks.html
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
for (4D gauge theory) background on Witten's talk:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.0888 (Nekrasov and Witten)
"...Omega-deformation of four-dimensional gauge theory ... linking the Omega-deformation to integrable Hamiltonian systems in one direction and Liouville theory of two-dimensional conformal field theory in another direction."
http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.2933 (Witten)
"..analytic continuation of three-dimensional Chern-Simons gauge theory... analytic continuation of three-dimensional quantum gravity ... twisted version of N=4 super Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions."
http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.4052 (Nekrasov et al)
"Quantization of Integrable Systems and Four Dimensional Gauge Theories"

The Princeton contingent is looking rather firmly 4D these days. Gaiotto and Witten, and also Arkani-Hamed's recent work tends that way (though I haven't seen the title of his String 2010 talk.) And let's not forget:
Yuji Tachikawa (IAS Princeton)
2d CFTs from 4d N=2 gauge theories
Nikita Nekrasov (IHES)
The uses of Omega-backgrounds
Andrew Strominger (Harvard U.)
The Kerr-Fermi Sea (already checked, a 4D paper)

 

[marcus]

More titles were posted today, so I'll update:

Davide Gaiotto (IAS Princeton)
Towards a classification of four dimensional N=2 gauge theories

Edward Witten (IAS Princeton)
From Gauge Theory To Integrability And Liouville Theory

Gregory W. Moore (Rutgers U.)
Say ''Halo!'' to new walls and new indices

Fernando Quevedo (Cambridge U. & CERN)
Phenomenological Implications of Toric Singularities

Xi Yin (Harvard, U.)
High Spin Gauge Theory and Holography

Savdeep Sethi (Chicago U. EFI)
Fluxes, Geometries and Non-Geometries

Nima Arkani-Hamed (IAS Princeton)
Scattering Amplitudes and the Grassmannian

Steven Weinberg (U. of Texas, Austin)
Gravity at High Energyhttp://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/TitleofTalks.html
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Weinberg's talk is almost certainly 4D and about the running of gravity at high energy. His asymptotic safety explanation of (1) inflation without an exotic "inflaton" field and (2) a graceful exit from inflation as the energy scale eases down from early universe conditions.
The title "Gravity at High Energy" strongly hints that he will present stuff from his two recent papers on this. I've blued talks that are likely to be 4D or non-stringy for some other reason.

for (4D gauge theory) background on Witten's talk:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.0888 (Nekrasov and Witten)
"...Omega-deformation of four-dimensional gauge theory ... linking the Omega-deformation to integrable Hamiltonian systems in one direction and Liouville theory of two-dimensional conformal field theory in another direction."
http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.2933 (Witten)
"..analytic continuation of three-dimensional Chern-Simons gauge theory... analytic continuation of three-dimensional quantum gravity ... twisted version of N=4 super Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions."
http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.4052 (Nekrasov et al)
"Quantization of Integrable Systems and Four Dimensional Gauge Theories"

The Princeton contingent is leaning 4D these days. Gaiotto and Witten, and let's not forget:
Yuji Tachikawa (IAS Princeton)
2d CFTs from 4d N=2 gauge theories

Two other papers of note:
Nikita Nekrasov (IHES)
The uses of Omega-backgrounds
Andrew Strominger (Harvard U.)
The Kerr-Fermi Sea (already checked, a 4D paper)

About Arkani-Hamed's talk, his last three papers are about N=4 SYM (N=4 super Yang Mills). Which, although plenty of connections with e.g. twistor string theory are pointed out, is primarily a 4D QFT, or?
Anybody want to correct me on this? I see this page on N=4 SYM says 4D:
http://www.physics.thetangentbundle.net/wiki/Quantum_field_theory/N%3D4_super_Yang-Mills_theory
How to classify?

 

[Physics Monkey]

Not rain on anyone excited about the return to 4d, but I don't think this means string people are tired of extra dimensions. Here are some examples of what I mean:

The people talking about 4d \mathcal{N} = 2 gauge theory are mostly talking about highly artificial math theories that have nothing or almost nothing to do with our world. Moreover, these theories draw their power from extra dimensions anyways, for example, there are constructions in M theory of these things. Additionally, the 4d 2d connection that tachikawa is talking about can be understood as various different kinds of compactification in 6 dimensions. I think Nima is also talking about an incredibly artificial theory, the \mathcal{N} = 4 theory. This thing doesn't have much to do with the real world despite being 4 dimensional (except possibly at finite T as a model of the rhic plasma).

Xi Yin's talk is about doing holography on the O(N) vector model in 3d which seems to require a complete tower of massless higher spin fields in the bulk. The other talks about holography are also mostly what marcus calls applications of "string math". The possible exception is Eva Silverstein, when I heard her talk, she said the partial goal was to have a relatively realistic 4d theory of quantum gravity, albeit in AdS.

Washington Taylor is explicitly in 6d. The F-theory people are working on compactifications from 12d.

Overall I feel that the apperance is 4d is not really because of an interest in realistic physics, but more because that's where the math has been leading lately. So not to sound too cynical, but mostly I see the usual dominance of mathematical excitement plus holography. It just happens to have something to do with 4d this time!

 

[marcus]

...Overall I feel that the apperance is 4d is not really because of an interest in realistic physics, but more because that's where the math has been leading lately...

Thanks for sharing your perspective on this. It's really helpful. In fact you partly confirm what i had myself begun to gather from looking over the papers!
Just because a number of them are homing in on 4D (and lower dimensions like 6D) does not mean they are necessarily getting more real world.

I would agree with your characterization of some of the work as extremely artificial and mathematics-driven.

BTW what is your view about the Wednesday group?

Wednesday
1.Gary Horowitz (UC Santa Barbara)
Recent Developments in Holographic Superconductors
2. Jerome P. Gauntlett (Imperial College)
Holographic Superconductors in M-Theory
3. Joseph Polchinski (KITP, Santa Barbara)
Semi-holographic Fermi Liquids
4. Christopher P. Herzog (Princeton U.)
Holographic Superconductors with Pencil and Paper

This research gambit strikes me as NOT directed towards unification, or ToE, or a fundamental theory of nature. It looks like part of a broad retreat from those earlier central goals.
More like a specialized application of some math techniques (which happened to be developed in the string context). Again, however, one should probably not expect the "holographic superconductor" research to be actually real world applicable---it could be more of what you described as artificial and math-driven---or on the other hand it could turn out useful. I'd appreciate your take on it.

 

[marcus]

Putting the whole Strings 2010 program together, it looks to me tentatively as if about 12 or the 41 talks are not about string theory as generally understood. Quite a few look like exit strategies from extra dimensions.

Monday
1. Michael Dine (UC Santa Cruz)
Symmetries in String Theory
2. Davide Gaiotto (IAS Princeton)
Towards a classification of four dimensional N=2 gauge theories
3. Yuji Tachikawa (IAS Princeton)
2d CFTs from 4d N=2 gauge theories
4. Jaume Gomis (Perimeter Institute)
The Virtue of Defects in Gauge Theories and 2d CFTs
5. Nadav Drukker (Humboldt U., Berlin)
A supermatrix model for ABJM theory
6. Gregory W. Moore (Rutgers U.)
Say ''Halo!'' to new walls and new indices
7. Xi Yin (Harvard, U.)
High Spin Gauge Theory and Holography
8. Fernando Quevedo (Cambridge U. & CERN)
Phenomenological Implications of Toric Singularities
9. John Ellis (CERN)
Searching for new physics at the LHC

Tuesday
1. Hirosi Ooguri (CALTECH)
Instability with Chern-Simons Terms
2. Johannes Walcher (CERN)
Compact Open Topological String
3. Savdeep Sethi (Chicago U. EFI)
Fluxes, Geometries and Non-Geometries
4. Nikita Nekrasov (IHES)
The uses of Omega-backgrounds
5. Edward Witten (IAS Princeton)
From Gauge Theory To Integrability And Liouville Theory
6. Andrew Strominger (Harvard U.)
The Kerr-Fermi Sea
7.Jan de Boer (U. of Amsterdam)
(Non) geometric Aspects of Black Hole Microstates
8. Ashoke Sen (Harish-Chandra I. )
Black holes and discrete symmetry
9. Washington Taylor (MIT)
Global aspects of the 6D supergravity landscape
10. Mirjam Cvetic (U. of Pennsylvania)
Non-perturbative effects for Type II and F-theory vacua

Wednesday
1.Gary Horowitz (UC Santa Barbara)
Recent Developments in Holographic Superconductors
2. Jerome P. Gauntlett (Imperial College)
Holographic Superconductors in M-Theory
3. Joseph Polchinski (KITP, Santa Barbara)
Semi-holographic Fermi Liquids
4. Christopher P. Herzog (Princeton U.)
Holographic Superconductors with Pencil and Paper
5. Silverstein TBA
6. Ilarion V. Melnikov (AEI Potsdam)
Linear sigma models and heterotic moduli spaces

Thursday
1. Nima Arkani-Hamed (IAS Princeton)
Scattering Amplitudes and the Grassmannian
2. Jan Louis (Hamburg U.)
Spontaenous N=2 -> N=1 supersymmetry breaking
3. Dieter Lüst (Max Planck Institute & ASC Munich)
Supersymmetry breaking on generalized geometries
4. Sakura Schafer-Nameki (KITP, Santa Barbara)
F-theory GUTs in Three Steps
5. Natalia Saulina (Perimeter Institute)
Compact F-theory GUT's with PQ symmetry
6. Steven Weinberg (U. of Texas, Austin)
Gravity at High Energy
7. Petr Horava (UC & LBL Berkeley)
Quantum Gravity with Anisotropic Scaling
8. Lance J. Dixon (SLAC)
Perturbative Ultraviolet Behavior of N=8 Supergravity
9. Michael B. Green (Cambridge U.)
String Dualities and Ultraviolet Behaviour of Supergravity

Friday
1. Juan Maldacena (IAS Princeton)
Minimal surfaces in Anti-de-Sitter, Wilson loops and scattering amplitudes
2. Dario Martelli (King's College)
Interpolating geometries and gauge/gravity duality
3. Vladimir Kazakov (ENS and Paris U. VI-VII)
Y-system for the spectrum of planar AdS/CFT: news and checks
4. Shamit Kachru (KITP, Santa Barbara)
New Horizons in AdS/CFT
5. Liam McAllister (Cornell U.)
Nonperturbative Contributions to D3-brane Potentials
6. Igor Klebanov (Princeton U. )
Branes with Topological Charges and AdS/CFT
7. Leonard Susskind (Stanford U.)
Eternal Inflation and Holography

The schedule:
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/Conference.html
The titles:
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/TitleofTalks.html

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Weinberg's talk is almost certainly 4D and about the running of gravity at high energy. His asymptotic safety explanation of (1) inflation without an exotic "inflaton" field and (2) a graceful exit from inflation as the energy scale eases down from early universe conditions.
The title "Gravity at High Energy" strongly hints that he will present stuff from his two recent papers on this. I've blued talks that are likely to be 4D or near-4D, like 6D with no use of compactified dimensions.

for (4D gauge theory) background on Witten's talk:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.0888 (Nekrasov and Witten)
"...Omega-deformation of four-dimensional gauge theory ... linking the Omega-deformation to integrable Hamiltonian systems in one direction and Liouville theory of two-dimensional conformal field theory in another direction."
http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.2933 (Witten)
"..analytic continuation of three-dimensional Chern-Simons gauge theory... analytic continuation of three-dimensional quantum gravity ... twisted version of N=4 super Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions."
http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.4052 (Nekrasov et al)
"Quantization of Integrable Systems and Four Dimensional Gauge Theories"

The Princeton contingent is leaning 4D these days. Gaiotto and Witten, and let's not forget:
Yuji Tachikawa (IAS Princeton)
2d CFTs from 4d N=2 gauge theories

Two other papers of note:
Nikita Nekrasov (IHES)
The uses of Omega-backgrounds (appears based on a 4D paper)
Andrew Strominger (Harvard U.)
The Kerr-Fermi Sea (already checked, a 4D paper)

About Arkani-Hamed's talk, his last three papers are about N=4 SYM (N=4 super Yang Mills). Which, although plenty of connections with e.g. twistor string theory are pointed out, is primarily a 4D QFT, or?
Anybody want to correct me on this? I see this page on N=4 SYM says 4D:
http://www.physics.thetangentbundle.net/wiki/Quantum_field_theory/N%3D4_super_Yang-Mills_theory
How to classify?

I wasn't sure about the Holographic Superconductors talks on Wednesday. Tentatively colored a couple of them green to indicate doubtful connection with central string concerns such as unification and fundamental particle physics.

 

[Haelfix]

Of the authors listed, only Weinberg and Horava are working on decidedly non stringy material. The rest is basically business as usual.

Eyeballing the list, the biggest change from recent years is the large amount of interest in Ftheory (both the phenomenology and some of its ramifications) and the new holographic superconductor ideas (nearly a whole day devoted to that!).

Meanwhile there is less ABJM stuff than last year.

 

[MTd2]

Witten's talking about 4D is no surprising. His most important contributions, since the beginning of his career, were about 3D and 4D theories. He got a fields for that.

 

[marcus]

If anyone wants to check for trends here is the website for Strings 2005, for comparison.
Strings 2005 had some 415 registered participants. It was at the U. Toronto, in July
http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/programs/scientific/04-05/string-theory/strings2005/index.html
Strings 2010 has 192 participants. Maybe we can compare the titles of talks and get an idea if there is any shift. In 2005 there were 45 regular talks (plus the public lectures and the evening panel discussion concerning "The Next Superstring Revolution")

==quote 2005 talks==
Strings 2005 (July 11-16, 2005)

Panel Discussion: The Next Superstring Revolution
Robbert Dijkgraaf (Amsterdam), Strings05 Public Lecture:
Strings, Black Holes, and the End of Space and Time
Leonard Susskind (Stanford), Strings05 Public Lecture:
Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design

Nima Arkani-Hamed, Harvard:
HEP circa 2010
Vijay Balasubramanian, Pennsylania:
The Library of Babel: Holography and Quantum Foam
Melanie Becker, Maryland:
M-theory Cosmology
Niklas Beisert, Princeton:
Applying Integrability in AdS and CFT
Iosif Bena, UCLA:
Geometric Transitions, Black Rings and Black Hole Microstates
Dick Bond, CITA, Toronto:
Measuring Cosmic Parameters
Freddy Cachazo, Perimeter Institute:
Recent Progress in Perturbative Gauge Theories
Atish Dabholkar, Tata Institute:
Going beyond Bekenstein and Hawking
Frederik Denef, Rutgers:
Constructions and distributions of string vacua
Albert de Roeck, CERN: (no audio available)
Physics beyond the Standard Model at the LHC
Bernard de Wit, Institute for Theoretical Physics & Spinoza Institute, Utrecht:
Supersymmetric Black Hole Partition Functions
Michael Dine, Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics:
Branches of the Landscape
Michael Douglas, I.H.E.S., Rutgers:
Is the number of string vacua finite?
Henriette Elvang, UC Santa Barbara:
Black rings
Sergey Frolov, Max-Planck-Institut fur Gravitationsphysik Albert-Einstein-Institut, Potsdam:
Multi-parameter deformations of AdS_5 x S^5 geometry
Amihay Hanany, MIT:
Brane Tilings, Dimers and Quiver Gauge Theories
Petr Horava, California, Berkeley & LBNL: (no audio available)
Noncritical M-Theory in 2+1 Dimensions as a Nonrelativistic Fermi Liquid
Gary Horowitz, UCSB:
A new endpoint for Hawking evaporation
Shamit Kachru, SLAC, Stanford:
A classical type IIA landscape
Renata Kallosh, Stanford:
String cosmology and the index of the Dirac operator
Anton Kapustin, Caltech:
Disorder operators in gauge theories and duality
Per Kraus, UCLA:
Attractors, Anomalies, and Black Hole Entropy
Martin Kruczenski, Brandeis:
Strings from N=1 superconformal gauge theories
Hong Liu, MIT:
Black hole singularities in Yang-Mills theories
Oleg Lunin, IAS:
Marginal deformations of field theories and their gravity duals
Juan Maldacena, IAS:
Free fermions and BPS geometries
Dario Martelli, CERN:
New results in AdS/CFT
Hirosi Ooguri, CalTech:
Topological String Theory
Joseph Polchinski, KITP, UCSB:
Update on cosmic strings
Fernando Quevedo, Cambridge:
Exponentially large extra dimensions and soft supersymmetry breaking in type IIB flux compactifications
Vyacheslav Rychkov, ITFA, Amsterdam:
Geometry quantization from supergravity
Nathan Seiberg, IAS:
New Phenomena in 2d String Theory
Ashoke Sen, Harish-Chandra Research Institute:
Extremal black holes in higher derivative gravity
Eva Silverstein, SLAC, Stanford:
The Tachyon at the End of the Universe
Andrei Starinets, Perimeter Institute:
Holography and hydrodynamics
Andrew Strominger, Harvard:
Fun with Black Holes
Shigeki Sugimoto, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto:
Analysis of QCD via Supergravity
Tadashi Takayanagi, Harvard:
Time-like Linear Dilaton and Open-Closed Duality
Alessandro Tomasiello, ITP, Stanford:
The Generalized Complex Geometry of Supersymmetry
Henry Tye, Cornell:
Wavefunction of the Universe
Angel Uranga, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid:
Infrared dynamics of duality cascades and warped throats
Erik Verlinde, ITF, Amsterdam:
A Matrix Big Bang
Edward Witten, IAS:
Axions in String Theory
Shing-Tung Yau, Harvard:
Superstring theory with torsion
Barton Zwiebach, MIT:
Is there a closed string tachyon vacuum?
==endquote==

 

[marcus]

Right now Nekrasov is giving his talk and I was trying to listen to the live audio stream. But the audio keeps going out, like a loose connection.

College Station is in East Texas, near Houston TX. So the timezone is Central Usa.
Two hours ahead of Pacific, so in Texas it is now 11:40 in the morning
Witten's talk begins around 12:10. In just a few minutes.

Too bad about their audio breaking up all the time---or maybe it is just my server's fault.

If you want to try to listen, go here:
http://mitchell.physics.tamu.edu/Conference/string2010/index.html
and see where it says "webcast with live streaming"
and click on "webcast".

AFAICS it is pretty minimal. They don't have video, at least at this point, and there is no indication that stuff is being archived. And there is no sign of online slides PDF. But that presumably could change.

 

[marcus]

I just listened to the whole Witten talk, from 12:10 to 12:55 Texas time.
My impression is it lends credence to something Physicsmonkey said earlier in this thread.

The talk was incredibly 4D but also incredibly stringy.

He often reiterated that he was working on a 4D manifold M. And then sometimes he went DOWN to even lower dimension, like 2D, by for instance compactifying.
The talk was extremely background DEpendent. The 4D manifold M was sometimes set up to be a 3sphere X R, or sometimes it was a 2D cylinder surface X something, or sometimes it had a toroidal (donut surface) component. By introducing symmetries in the underlying space you could to mathematical tricks with fields defined on it.

So, it was very different from Witten's Strings 2007 talk about mere 3D Quantum Gravity. That 2007 talk surprised some people because it was so unstringy. Someone at the end asked him a question like "but what about string theory?" because he hadn't talked enough string shop during the talk. But this 2010 talk was quite different!

There were no questions after, because it was time for lunch. And although the dimensionality was chopped down to what I'd call "toy" model levels, the vocabulary was heavily string.

Also MTd2, notice that the work Witten talked about involves a LOT of people. Including three others Nekrasov Tachigawa and Gaiotto who had each already given papers about it at the conference. And he was constantly referring to other people as well
The themes of Omega background, and N=2 or N=4 super YangMills in 4D.

This all presents a riddle. What has led to this convergence on 4D? Using elaborate string math methods. Physicsmonkey suggests that it was simply that "the math led them to 4D".
That is possible but why and how. Or is this merely toy-modeling. Work something out in lower dimensionality and then jack it up to 11D or whatever. It doesn't come across that way, but it could be.

Now it is getting close to 14:10 Texas time, and Strominger will be talking. Strominger is another one whose talk is 4D this time, if we go by his arxiv paper with the same title.
But it doesn't seem to be part of the cluster of papers that Witten was talking about. He is coming from a different direction.

===============
EDIT well, the live streaming audio is kaput again. It was OK all thru Witten's talk this morning but it broke up sporadically with Nekrasov and now, at the moment, it is completely out for Strominger.

 

[Haelfix]

Wittens focus is on Geometric Langlands, that's the primary motivation for the admittedly technical paper.

It uses stringy or semi stringy math (generalized quiver diagrams) to analyze a toy model of the more general correspondance, trying to get a physics foothold into the subject.

The hope is twofold.. One is an eventual 'physics' proof of the duality, and conversely a language/dictionary that interpolates between geometric Langlands and certain integrable systems, where you would presumably have a powerful new quantization method available for that class of gauge theories..

It should be emphasized that, at first glance this has absolutely nothing to do with phenomenology except in so far as certain of these gauge theories might eventually correspond, be dual too, or be dimensionally reduced to certain quantum systems of interest.

 

[marcus]

Well fortunately the audio came back and I was able to listen to a portion of Strominger's talk called The Kerr-Fermi Sea. As far as I could tell, it followed closely the paper by the same name:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.4265
The Kerr-Fermi Sea
17 pages, 1 figure
(Submitted on 21 Dec 2009)
"The presence of a massive scalar field near a Kerr black hole is known to produce instabilities associated with bound superradiant modes. In this paper we show that for massive fermions, rather than inducing an instability, the bound superradiant modes condense and form a Fermi sea which extends well outside the ergosphere. The shape of this Fermi sea in phase space and various other properties are analytically computed in the semiclassical WKB approximation. The low energy effective theory near the black hole is described by ripples in the Fermi surface. Expressions are derived for their dispersion relation and the effective force on particles which venture into the sea."

This paper is about objects in the real world, not about extra dimensions and fancy mathematics. It is of general interest to Relativists who model realworld black holes. At the end of his talk he got right down to considering if the effects of this sea could be observed. The black hole does not have to be extremal, his analysis extends down to low angular momentum---but the lower the spin, the less the effect and the Fermi sea becomes negligible.

 

[marcus]

Strings 2010 doesn't seem to have gotten much notice or comment in the physics blogs. Does anyone have links to some reactions from those attending? Comment from string theorists or possibly from some non-string physicists who might have been in the audience?

Today I was listening to part of Dieter Lüst's talk and heard him mention that his group at Munich intends to host Strings 2012. That might be an interesting conference, in part because there could finally be some statistically significant results from LHC. Whether or not they have any real bearing on supersymmetry or on superstrings, LHC data could be stimulating some new ideas, by that time.

What do you make of this blog comment from a heavy ion physicist who was attending Strings 2010 at College Station, TX?
==quote==
lun says:
March 17, 2010 at 4:25 pm
As a heavy ion physicist with an interest in AdS/CFT, the presentations I saw absolutely shocked me.

The tone of the speakers, and I am talking about the leading lights of string theory, was essentially “we learned everything there is to learn about heavy ions, so we are not interested in it anymore, let us do condensed matter physics”.

While AdS/CFT was, and still is, a promising field, its “objective” impact to understanding the system created at RHIC is zero: I mean, there are neat calculations of highly idealized models, but there is no evidence that these models actually apply to the real world. Worse than that, there was very little effort to _look_ for this evidence. For the string theorists to now behave as if the job is finished, and they can concentrate on something else, is simply preposterous. It would be bad enough to admit failure (its premature, this approach has potential!), but they behave as if it was an unqualified success (and surely enough, PR annoucements will continue to claim this). Heavy ion phenomenologists (not to speak of the experimentalists) have every right to be extremely annoyed at this attitude.

No idea how the condensed matter community will receive this interest. The people I know working on high-Tc superconductivity and related problems (a sample of ~5) have either never heard of AdS/CFT, or are dismissive of it. From my admittedly naive outsider perspective, the models described in the talks are largely too “artificial” to teach us anything we do not know already (in comparison the heavy ion models are actually pretty simple and natural, something I have in the past found very attractive), so it looks very much a repeat of the heavy ion performance: A few technical calculations of models that “look like” the system they claim to represent, little phenomenological effort, and a lot of PR.

Honestly, if this is the best the field can offer, we are in deep trouble.
==endquote==
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2794&cpage=1#comment-53886

 

[MTd2]

Where is this blog?

 

[MTd2]

Oh, that's just Peter Woit's blog. What can I say? If that's what he thought, string theorists should just for another job.

 

[marcus]

The comment is by Lun, who says his field is Heavy Ion Physics. I have never seen any comment by him before at Woit's blog. My guess is that he must have had a very positive hopeful attitude toward String, to have even caused him to fly out to east Texas to attend the conference in the first place. And his comment suggests that, in fact, he was expecting some of the presentations to be relevant to RHIC research.

But was disappointed.

 

[marcus]

I just listened to portions of talks by Weinberg, Horava, and Lance Dixon.
Weinberg's was the most interesting talk of the conference, for me. And the most nonstringy.
He highlighted recent work by Benedetti Machado Saueressig, and also by Niedermayer. He got more and livelier questions after the talk than any speaker I heard all week, with the most exciting 5 minutes of the conference being a rapid-fire Q&A between Weinberg and Edward Witten.

Witten seemed seriously interested by Weinberg's talk, and jumped right in with questions. The two seemed to immediately understand each other so no time was wasted on hem and haw. Good to hear that level of engagement.

Weinberg pointed out unresolved issues with the Asymptotic Safe gravity approach. We should not take for granted. However: "there's no question Newton's constant runs." And
"effective field theory may be all there is up to arbitrarily high energy."

He was especially interested in applying A.S. to cosmology. It isn't clear yet that the conjectured explanation of inflation will work. If we follow Benedetti Machado Saueressig analysis, there would not be enough "e-foldings" of inflation produced by the running of the constants. Some inflationary episode but ending too soon. Needs work, but judged worth investigating.
=============
Horava said explicitly that his approach is indeed a "plan B to string theory". In other words a lifeboat in case of trouble with the ship of string. But he emphasized the common elements, how techniques could be carried over, so he presented it as an attractive transition path for emigré string theorists. A new but not altogether unfamiliar line of research that some could shift over into.

 

[MTd2]

Did horava say something about his work with Cenke Xu, the one where he cites CDT?

http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.0009

There is a discussion about it here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=382873

 

[marcus]

Did horava say something about his work with Cenke Xu, the one where he cites CDT?

http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.0009

There is a discussion about it here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=382873

Yes! He made much of the apparent kinship with CDT, and he said some quite favorable things about CDT, but I cannot quote verbatim. He likes it.

 

[MTd2]

So, Witten has basically gave up on strings?

 

[marcus]

"give up"? I don't see how anyone could say that!

A complex creative mind can set one interest aside and turn to another, and then again. We can't see into each other's minds.

I take him at face value, what he says. In 2006 he came out to UC Berkeley to give a series of 3 talks, each 90 minutes, about his research interest, which was Geometric Langlands. I attended all three talks and he spoke for 270 minutes without mentioning string theory.

Then at the end of the last talk, it occurred to someone to wonder "what about string theory?" And so they raised their hand and asked, when it was time for questions. He put them off with a one-sentence reply.
"Oh! I still hope that string theory will turn out to have something to do with Nature."

I see no reason not to believe that he expressed his inner state of mind precisely, and that he still feels the same way. I have not heard anything to the contrary.

Plus there is some very interesting mathematics! And a mathematician does not "give up" on some inherently interesting mathematics whatever the connection or non-connection with Nature.

However I could be wrong. If you hear anything that suggests to you that Witten's enthusiasm for string is less than it was, say, in 2006 when I heard him talk, that would be interesting I suppose, so please let me know.

He is not the most important bellwether in the string community now, however, IMHO. I think it is the younger ones, under 40, who lead now, and it is them that we should be watching. Witten's influence may be exaggerated.