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This book attempts to explain why string theory may provide the comprehensive underlying theory that describes and explains our world. It is an enthusiastic view of how compactified string/M-theories, plus data that may be reachable, seem to have the possibilities of leading to a comprehensive underlying theory of particle physics and cosmology, perhaps soon. We are living in a hugely exciting era for science, one during which it may be possible to achieve a real and true understanding of our physical world.
Founded on three decades of research, this second edition covers the Planck scale, Higgs physics, supersymmetry and supersymmetry breaking, the Hierarchy problem, dark matter, inflation, hidden sectors, future colliders, testing theories in physics, possible limits to understanding, and more.
Key Features
- Written by a world-leading authority on compactified string theory
- Provides simple and informative explanations of many topics
- Accessible to both physicists and general readers interested in string theory
- Provides glimpses of future experiments that may provide strong tests of the theory, and experiments that could potentially detect dark matter
- The second edition includes new material from compactified M-theory identifying the physical inflaton, explaining the matter asymmetry, mass-energy scales of particle physics and cosmology, cosmological histories, dark matter candidates, supersymmetry breaking, future colliders and possible tests
The book is a monograph written in the style of an essay that is scientific in language and presentation and does not use formalism or equations to convey the points. It is very clear and brief and obviously written by an author who has been deeply involved with the field for quite some time already. It has some end-of-chapter references to books and publications, and a glossary that explains the main terminology. This, together with the absence of mathematics, makes it accessible to a broad readership in principle, although it takes some amount of knowledge about the topics under discussion to fully be able to appreciate the book.
Manuel Vogel, CONTEMPORARY PHYSICS, November 2022
Preface to second edition
Preface
PART 1: What we probably know
1 The Standard Models – overview and perspective
2 The Planck scale - compactifications - extra dimensions
3 Higgs physics: the hierarchy problem
4 Supersymmetry
5 Compactification
6 The visible sector
7 Anthropic questions and string theory
8 The scales we need to explain
9 Testing theories in physics, including string theories
10 Dark matter candidates
PART 2: Explaining and interpreting recent compactified M-theory results
11 Moduli
12 Hidden sectors 13 Inflation 14 The matter asymmetry 15 Possible tests soon 16 Future colliders? 17 Three families, quark mass hierarchies and splittings 18 How much can we understand?
Appendix A
Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D
Glossary