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Register a new userPersonnal recollections about the birth of string theory
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Authors
Eugene Cremmer
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Invited contribution to the collective book The Birth of String Theory
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In this contribution we go through the developments that in the years 1968 to 1974 led from the Veneziano model to the bosonic string.
It is argued that the traditional realist methodology of physics, according to which human concepts, laws and theories can grasp the essence of reality, is incompatible with the most fruitful interpretation of quantum formalism. The proof rests on the violation by quantum mechanics of the foundational principles of that methodology. An alternative methodology, in which the construction of sciences finishes at the level of human experience, as standard quantum theory strongly suggests, is then conjectured.
String theory has transformed our understanding of geometry, topology and spacetime. Thus, for this special issue of Foundations of Physics commemorating Forty Years of String Theory, it seems appropriate to step back and ask what we do not understand. As I will discuss, time remains the least understood concept in physical theory. While we have made significant progress in understanding space, our understanding of time has not progressed much beyond the level of a century ago when Einstein introduced the idea of space-time as a combined entity. Thus, I will raise a series of open questions about time, and will review some of the progress that has been made as a roadmap for the future.
In this review article, we first discuss a possible regularization of the big bang curvature singularity of the standard Friedmann cosmology, where the curvature singularity is replaced by a spacetime defect. We then consider the hypothesis that a new physics phase gave rise to this particular spacetime defect. Specifically, we set out on an explorative calculation using the IIB matrix model, which has been proposed as a particular formulation of nonperturbative superstring theory (M-theory).
In this paper, we establish a fully string-theoretic framework for calculating one-loop Higgs masses directly from first principles in perturbative closed string theories. Our framework makes no assumptions other than worldsheet modular invariance and is therefore applicable to all closed strings, regardless of the specific string construction utilized. This framework can also be employed even when spacetime supersymmetry is broken (and even when this breaking occurs at the Planck scale), and can be utilized for all scalar Higgs fields, regardless of the particular gauge symmetries they break. This therefore includes the Higgs field responsible for electroweak symmetry breaking in the Standard Model. Notably, using our framework, we demonstrate that a gravitational modular anomaly generically relates the Higgs mass to the one-loop cosmological constant, thereby yielding a string-theoretic connection between the two fundamental quantities which are known to suffer from hierarchy problems in the absence of spacetime supersymmetry. We also discuss a number of crucial issues involving the use and interpretation of regulators in UV/IR-mixed theories such as string theory, and the manner in which one can extract an EFT description from such theories. Finally, we analyze the running of the Higgs mass within such an EFT description, and uncover the existence of a dual IR region which emerges at high energies as the consequence of an intriguing scale-inversion duality symmetry. We also identify a generic stringy effective potential for the Higgs fields in such theories. Our results can therefore serve as the launching point for a rigorous investigation of gauge hierarchy problems in string theory.
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