SPECULATIONS ON
STRING THEORY APPLICATIONS
TO ( CONDENSED MATTER ) PHYSICS
Nikita Nekrasov, IHES
23d Solvay conference
1-3 decembre 2005
Quantum field theorists and consequently string theorists
have borrowed many ideas from condensed matter physics,
e.g. confinement, Higgs mechanism, to name a few
TOPOLOGICAL STRINGS
• Special amplitudes in Type II superstring
compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds
• Simplified string theories,
interesting on their own
• Mathematically better understood
• Come in several variants:
A, B, (C…), open, closed,…