First Week

Luis Alvarez-Gaumé (Introduction to the Bosonic String)

References: 1). First chapter of Green Schwarz Witten. 2). First few chapters of Polchinski's first volume 3). How to quantized free scalar fields, for instance Peskin's first two chapters, or the first few chapters of the Abdalla Abdalla Rothe book. 4). Review complex analysis, at least a reasonable acquaintance with Cauchy's theorem, Laurent expansions, and elemetary residue theorems. 5). A little Riemannian Geometry, know what is a metric, connection and curvature. 6). Some group theory would be useful, say familiarity with SU(2), raising and lowering operators etc.

Carmen Núñez (Introduction to the Superstring)

References: J. Polchinski, String Theory, Vol. II, Chapters 10 and 12; M. Green, J. Schwarz and Witten, Superstring theory, Vol. I, Chapter 4; D. Lust and S. Theisen, Lectures on String Theory, Chapters 7, 8, 9; D. Friedan, E. Martinec and S. Shenker, Nucl. Phys. B271 (1986) 93.

Seif Randjbar-Daemi (Supersymmetry and Supergravity)

References: First few chapter of Wess and Bagger's book on supersymmetry.

Second Week

Robbert Dijkgraaf (Introduction to D-branes)

References: C. Johnson, "D-branes" (Cambridge Univ Press) or: C. Johnson, "D-brane primer", hep-th/0007170; Polchinksi Vol 1: open strings, Vol II: chap 10, 13.

Jeffrey Harvey (Heterotic Superstring and Solitons)

References: Chapters 11 and 14 of Polchinski, Vol II; Supersymmetric String Solitons by Callan, Harvey and Strominger, hep-th/9112030; The Heterotic String is a Soliton by Harvey and Strominger, hep-th/9504047; Small Instantons in String Theory by Witten, hep-th/9511030.

Kumar Narain (Duality and M-theory)

References: Chapters 11 and 14 of Polchinski.

George Thompson (Calabi-Yau Compactifications)

References: Chapters 12,13 and 14 of Green, Schwarz and Witten

Third Week

Juan Maldacena (AdS-CFT Correspondence)

References: hep-th/0309246 (TASI 2003 Lectures on AdS/CFT)

Fernando Quevedo (String Phenomenology)

References: hep-th/9603074 (Lectures on superstring phenomenology); 2003 ICTP lectures; First six chapters of E. Kiritsis review (D-branes in standard model building, gravity and cosmology, hep-th/0310001).

Ashoke Sen (Tachyons in String Theory)

References: Polchinski's book on string theory, hep-th/9904207, and Vancouver lecturers on webpage http://www.pims.math.ca/science/2003/fmp/sen/

Barton Zwiebach (String Field Theory)

References: D-branes, tachyons, and string field theory, hep-th/0311017, by W. Taylor and B. Zwiebach (Lectures presented at TASI 2001); Tachyon potentials, star products and universality. hep-th 0006240, by L. Rastelli and B. Zwiebach. JHEP 0109 (2001) 038.