Abstract

In this series of lectures I shall discuss recent progress in our understanding of the classical dynamics of the brane-antibrane system in string theory. This system contains `tachyonic' modes, modes that grow with time under small perturbations. The non-trivial part of the dynamics of the brane-antibrane system can be encoded in the effective action describing the dynamics of the tachyonic modes. Both the static and the dynamical properties of this effective action display novel features, which are unexpected from the viewpoint of conventional field theories. We shall discuss these properties and their possible application to cosmology.

The first lecture will give a general overview of the subject and should be accessible to a person with knowledge of quantum field theory. Subsequent lectures will focus on the derivation of these results in string theory.

[Transparencies Pt.1] [Pt.2] [Pt.3]