This volume contains papers presented at the Nuffield Workshop on supersymmetry and its applications held at Cambridge in the summer of 1985 and attended by many of the leading experts in the field. In physical terms, supersymmetry is a symmetry or gauge invariance which connects bosons (particles with integer spin) with fermions (particles with half integer spin). The study of supersymmetry has led to the construction of Yang-Mills theories, which are the first field theories to be free of the divergences that usually occur in quantum theories, with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. It has also led to the construction of supergravity and superstring theories which seem to be the best hope for a complete unified theory of all physical interactions including gravity. Supersymmetry and its Applications reviews a number of recent advances in the area of anomalies, the topology of gauge theories, superstrings, supergravity and super Yang-Mills theory.The papers, written by both physicists and mathematicians, include both expository articles and progress reports describing most recent developments.

A brief introductory description of the new physical and mathematical ideas involved in formulating supersymmetric theories. The basic ideas are worked out in low space dimensionalities and techniques where the formulae do not obscure the concepts.

Building on the earlier edition it now encapsulates the substantial developments that have been made in supersymmetric quantum mechanics in recent years. Aimed at graduate students and scientists this book provides a thorough review supersymmetric quantum mechanics and now includes problems and solutions.

This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the ideas and applications of supersymmetry.

The past decade has witnessed dramatic developments in the field of theoretical physics. This book is a comprehensive introduction to these recent developments. It contains a review of the Standard Model, covering non-perturbative topics, and a discussion of grand unified theories and magnetic monopoles. It introduces the basics of supersymmetry and its phenomenology, and includes dynamics, dynamical supersymmetry breaking, and electric-magnetic duality. The book then covers general relativity and the big bang theory, and the basic issues in inflationary cosmologies before discussing the spectra of known string theories and the features of their interactions. The book also includes brief introductions to technicolor, large extra dimensions, and the Randall-Sundrum theory of warped spaces. This will be of great interest to graduates and researchers in the fields of particle theory, string theory, astrophysics and cosmology. The book contains several problems, and password protected solutions will be available to lecturers at www.cambridge.org/9780521858410.

The lectures featured in this book treat fundamental concepts necessary for understanding the physics behind these mathematical applications. Freed approaches the topic with the assumption that the basic notions of supersymmetric field theory are unfamiliar to most mathematicians. He presents the material intending to impart a firm grounding in the elementary ideas.

The theoretical understanding of elementary particle interactions has under gone a revolutionary change during the past one and a half decades. The spontaneously broken gauge theories, which in the 1970s emerged as a prime candidate for the description of electro-weak (as weIl as strong) interactions, have been confirmed by the discovery of neutral weak currents as weIl as the w- and Z-bosons. We now have a field theory of electro-weak interactions at energy scales below 100 GeV-the Glashow-Weinberg-Salam theory. It is a renormalizable theory which enables us to do calculations without en countering unnecessary divergences. The burning question now is: Wh at lies ahead at the next level of unification? As we head into the era of supercolliders and ultrahigh energy machines to answer this question, many ap, pealing possi bilities exist: left-right symmetry, technicolor, compositeness, grand unifica ti on, supersymmetry, supergravity, Kaluza-Klein models, and most recently superstrings that even unify gravity along with other interactions. Experi ments will decide if any one or any combination of these is to be relevant in the description of physics at the higher energies. As an outcome of our con fidence in the possible scenerios for elementary particle physics, we have seen our understanding of the early uni verse improve significantly.

This book is about supergravity, which combines the principles of general relativity and local gauge invariance with the idea of supersymmetries between bosonic and fermionic degrees of freedom. The authors give a thorough and pedagogical introduction to the subject suitable for beginning graduate or advanced undergraduate students in theoretical high energy physics or mathematical physics. Interested researchers working in these or related areas are also addressed. The level of the presentation assumes a working knowledge of general relativity and basic notions of differential geometry as well as some familiarity with global supersymmetry in relativistic field theories. Bypassing curved superspace and other more technical approaches, the book starts from the simple idea of supersymmetry as a local gauge symmetry and derives the mathematical and physical properties of supergravity in a direct and “minimalistic” way, using a combination of explicit computations and geometrical reasoning. Key topics include spinors in curved spacetime, pure supergravity with and without a cosmological constant, matter couplings in global and local supersymmetry, phenomenological and cosmological implications, extended supergravity, gauged supergravity and supergravity in higher spacetime dimensions.

This OA text develops the basic concepts of supersymmetry for experimental and phenomenological particle physicists and graduate students.

This invaluable book provides an elementary description of supersymmetric quantum mechanics which complements the traditional coverage found in the existing quantum mechanics textbooks. It gives physicists a fresh outlook and new ways of handling quantum-mechanical problems, and also leads to improved approximation techniques for dealing with potentials of interest in all branches of physics. The algebraic approach to obtaining eigenstates is elegant and important, and all physicists should become familiar with this. The book has been written in such a way that it can be easily appreciated by students in advanced undergraduate quantum mechanics courses. Problems have been given at the end of each chapter, along with complete solutions to all the problems. The text also includes material of interest in current research not usually discussed in traditional courses on quantum mechanics, such as the connection between exact solutions to classical solution problems and isospectral quantum Hamiltonians, and the relation to the inverse scattering problem.