The recent spate of interesting and exciting results in d-(Dirichlet)branes and black holes have drastically changed our way of thinking about superstring and membrane theories. Consequently, it is probably an appropriate time for us to study and investigate these subjects in light of these recent developments. D-branes beagn as topological obstructs in superstring theories. Furthermore, it is found that the longitudinal components can be gauged away leaving the transverse components as excitations These in turn can be described by an effective theory given by supersymmetric Yang-Mill fields. In addition, N D-branes can be superposed to give rise to an SU(N) nonabelain gauge theory for the lowest energy exicitations. Starting with basic quantum field theory, we will be looking at superstring theory. Duality is a fundamental concept in string theory. We will look into the power of T-duality and revise the relations between the various strings theories,namely the Type I, Type IIA, type IIB, and the two heterotic strings. Compactification is an important concept here and we should look into the compactification in T^6 space. In particular we will also briefly look at K3 space. We will revise our concepts of supersymmetry and work out some concrete calculations in supersymmetric Yang-Mill theory. We may want to go back to SUSY Yang-Mill and discuss N=2 Seiberg-Witten theory in four dimensions. This theory is exactly soluble but the miracle of the whole theory lies in the moduli space, a complex one-dimensional manifold. Indeed we will find that an understanding of the monodromy structure can help us determine the exact non-perturbative prepotential for the effective low-energy theory.

REFERENCES

Superstring discussion

SUPERSTRING THEORY. VOL. 1: INTRODUCTION. By M.B. Green (Queen Mary - Westfield Coll.), J.H. Schwarz (Cal Tech), E. Witten (Princeton U.). 1987. Cambridge, Uk: Univ. Pr. ( 1987) 469 P. ( Cambridge Monographs On Mathematical Physics).

SUPERSTRING THEORY. VOL. 2: LOOP AMPLITUDES, ANOMALIES AND PHENOMENOLOGY. By M.B. Green (Queen Mary - Westfield Coll.), J.H. Schwarz (Cal Tech), E. Witten (Princeton U.). 1987. Cambridge, Uk: Univ. Pr. ( 1987) 596 P. ( Cambridge Monographs On Mathematical Physics).

For supersymmetric gauge theory

INTRODUCTION TO S DUALITY IN N=2 SUPERSYMMETRIC GAUGE THEORIES: A PEDAGOGICAL REVIEW OF THE WORK OF SEIBERG AND WITTEN. By Luis Alvarez-Gaume, S.F. Hassan (CERN). CERN-TH-96-371, Dec 1996. 81pp. e-Print Archive: hep-th/9701069

D-Branes

TASI LECTURES ON D-BRANES.

By Joseph Polchinski (Santa Barbara, ITP). NSF-ITP-96-145, Nov 1996. 63pp. e-Print Archive: hep-th/9611050

NOTES ON D-BRANES.

By Joseph Polchinski, Shyamoli Chaudhuri, Clifford V. Johnson (Santa Barbara, ITP). NSF-ITP-96-003, Jan 1996. 45pp. e-Print Archive: hep-th/9602052

GAUGE FIELDS AND D-BRANES. By Michael R. Douglas (Rutgers U., Piscataway). RU-96-24, Apr 1996. 10pp. e-Print Archive: hep-th/9604198

BRANES WITHIN BRANES.

By Michael R. Douglas (Rutgers U., Piscataway). RU-95-92, Dec 1995. 10pp. e-Print Archive: hep-th/9512077

The Physics News Update,a digest of physics news items by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein at the American Institute of Physics, has consistently been providing briefy synopsis of developments in supersymmetry and superstring theories:

Physics News Update

There are several web sites which provide excellent review of introductory materials.

Cambridge University DAMPT group

Sunil Mukhi

John Schwarz's Review

Cornell University

There is also an interesting on-line introduction to superstring theory with animation showing the interactions of closed strings in

Online Introduction

You can download many interesting preprints and lecture notes on supersymmetry and superstring theories from the following sites:

Preprint Papers

Lecture notes at IAS

A Search on Los Alamos Archive on D-Branes