Resource Letter NSST-1: The Nature and Status of String Theory

TL;DR

This Resource Letter offers a comprehensive guide to introductory and review literature on string theory, catering to students at various levels, despite the subject's technical complexity.

Contribution

It uniquely organizes string theory resources for different knowledge levels, including popular accounts and advanced research topics, aiding diverse learners.

Findings

Provides a structured overview of string theory literature

Includes resources for both general public and advanced students

Covers recent developments like branes, holography, and phenomenology

Abstract

This Resource Letter provides a guide to some of the the introductory and review literature in string theory. It is in no way complete, though it is intended to be of use to students at several levels. Owing to the nature of the subject, even much of the introductory literature is quite technical by the standards of many Resource Letters, requiring prior knowledge of quantum field theory and general relativity. This Resource Letter is thus somewhat different from others. The first part describes a few more popular accounts of string theory, which are primarily addressed to the general public, but those with an understanding of basic physics will be able to read them more deeply and so obtain a useful rough orientation to the field. The second part describes resources that are available at the advanced undergraduate level, and the balance describes string resources for more advanced students. The latter range from general introductions to recent review articles on branes and black holes, gauge/gravity duality, string field theory, non-commutative geometry, non-BPS branes, tachyon condensation, phenomenology, brane worlds, orbifolds, Calabi-Yau manifolds, and holography.