String Theory or Field Theory?

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current status and recent developments in string theory, emphasizing its potential to overcome quantum field theory's limitations, especially in formulating a quantum theory of gravity, and its contributions to understanding quantum field theory.

Contribution

It discusses major recent advances in going beyond perturbation theory in string and quantum field theories, highlighting string theory's role in addressing fundamental problems.

Findings

String theory has contributed to progress in quantum field theory understanding.

Recent developments aim to go beyond perturbation theory in string and quantum field theories.

String theory shows promise in formulating a quantum theory of gravity.

Abstract

The status of string theory is reviewed, and major recent developments - especially those in going beyond perturbation theory in the string theory and quantum field theory frameworks - are discussed. This analysis helps better understand the role and place of string theory in the modern picture of the physical world. Even though quantum field theory describes a wide range of experimental phenomena, it is emphasized that there are some insurmountable problems inherent in it - notably the impossibility to formulate the quantum theory of gravity on its basis - which prevent it from being a fundamental physical theory of the world of microscopic distances. It is this task, the creation of such a theory, which string theory, currently far from completion, is expected to solve. In spite of its somewhat vague current form, string theory has already led to a number of serious results and greatly contributed to progress in the understanding of quantum field theory. It is these developments which are our concern in this review.