Course Information
Course Meetings T at 11AM in U of W room 2L26 (may be rescheduled from time to time)
Dr. Andrew Frey2L26
a dot frey at uwinnipeg dot ca
786-9215
Office Hours by appointment
This is the course homepage the for UManitoba Physics reading course on the AdS/CFT Correspondence.
I welcome feedback and comments on the course. If you're more comfortable commenting anonymously, leave me a note in my mailbox in the UW department office (3L00A).
Texts
This course will largely be based on material from the MIT OpenCourseWare class by John McGreevy:
John McGreevy. 8.821 String Theory, Fall 2008. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare), http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-821-string-theory-fall-2008/. License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.
Reading assignments will typically come from the course lecture notes and syllabus materials.
Additional reading (from other texts, journal articles, etc) may be assigned, and further references will be listed here.
Important Dates
- Last Day of Lecture: 8 Dec 2015
- Final Exam Due: TBA
Reading Schedule
Reading assignments will be posted on the course web page each week. As the course meetings will mostly be question-answer periods, you will need to do the readings in advance (and submit reading summaries as indicated below).
| Dates | Topic | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 18 Aug | Introduction | Lecture 1, Lecture 2, hep-th/9905111 §1.1 |
| 25 Aug | Introduction | same, plus handout |
| 1 Sept | AdS5xS5 & holography | Lecture 3, Lecture 4, gr-qc/0602037 |
| 8 Sept | Large N Theories | Lecture 7, Lecture 8, hep-th/9905111 §1.2,3.1.2 |
| 15 Sept | Conformal symmetry | Lecture 9, Lecture 10, hep-th/9905111 §2.1, Callan article (available on UW campus) |
| 22 Sept | AdS Geometry | Lecture 11, Lecture 12, hep-th/9905111 §2.2, hep-th/0309246 §3 |
| 28 Sept (Mon!) | 2-pt Correlators | Lecture 13, Lecture 14, hep-th/9905111 §3.3.1, hep-th/9802150 §2.1, 2.4 to eqn (2.23) |
| 6 Oct | More Correlators | review plus Lecture 15, hep-th/0309246 §4, |
| 13 Oct | 3-pt Functions, Wilson Loops | Lecture 16 (through §3), Lecture 17 (start at §4), hep-th/0201253 §8.3,8.4, hep-th/9905111 §3.5.1 |
| 20 Oct | More Wilson Loops plus | Wilson loop readings above plus Lecture 18, skim Lecture 19 |
| 27 Oct | Black Hole Thermodynamics | Lecture 22, Lecture 23, Jacobson lectures §2 and 3.3 |
| 3 Nov | Thermal AdS/CFT | Lecture 25 (24 is review), hep-th/9905111 §3.6 |
| 10 Nov | Other Dualities | arXiv:1010.6134 §4, hep-th/0205100 pp 1-6 |
| 17 Nov | pp Waves | hep-th/0307101 §2-4.1 |
| 24 Nov | Applied AdS/CFT | arXiv:1501.00007 §4 (arXiv:1409.3575 §9,10.3,12 optionally for more details) |
| 1 Dec | Holographic Superconductors | arXiv:1401.1504 §1-4 |
Homework Assignments
Policies
There are two types of assignments described below, reading summaries and homework assignments (the final exam will be treated as a homework assignment). Reading summaries are due at 23:59 the day prior to the course meeting, and homeworks are due in class on the due date. Preferably, reading summaries should be uploaded to the class dropbox folder as a latex PDF or black-and-white scanned PDF. If that is not possible, they can be emailed to me (same formats) or dropped in the box outside of U of W office 2L26.
Reading Summaries
You should prepare a reading summary each week based on the reading assignment. This should be in the form of two lists (rather than paragraphs). One should indicate the main points you understood from the reading, and the other list should give your questions. No summary is due for the first course meeting.
Homework Sets
- Assignment 1, due 21 Sept, Solution
- Assignment 2, due 6 Oct, Solution
- Assignment 3, due 27 Oct, Solution
- Assignment 4, due 10 Nov, Solution
- Assignment 5, due 1 Dec, Solution
Take-Home Exam
Allowed Materials: You may consult any of the on-line materials linked under the ``Reading Schedule'' and ``Homework Assignments'' sections of the course website (assigned sections only), as well as your graded homework assignments and any notes you took during our course meetings. You may not consult other material or discuss your solutions with each other. I am available in person the week of 14 Dec or by email at any time if you have questions.
Last updated: 16:41 on 25 Dec 2015