A brief review of `little string theories'

Abstract

This is a brief review of the current state of knowledge on `little string theories', which are non-gravitational theories having several string-like properties. We focus on the six-dimensional maximally supersymmetric `little string theories' and describe their definition, some of their simple properties, the motivations for studying them, the discrete lightcone quantization and holographic constructions of these theories and their behaviour at finite energy density.