Lectures from the European RTN Winter School on Strings, Supergravity and Gauge Fields, Barcelona, 12-16 January 2004

Abstract

This issue of Classical and Quantum Gravity contains the proceedingsof the RTN European Winter School on Strings, Supergravity and Gauge Fields, which was held at the University of Barcelona, Spain,between 12-16 January 2004. The School was part of the RTN programme The Quantum Structure of Spacetime and the Geometric Nature ofFundamental Interactions of the European Union. It wasattended by 181 registered participants.The lectures contain a pedagogical introduction to topics in stringtheory which are currently under active investigation. They were targeted mainly at students near the end of their PhD, and young postdocs and researchers. The topics werecarefully selected to cover phenomenological aspects of string theory,covered by the lectures by A Uranga (Intersecting BraneWorlds) and U Danielsson (String Theory and Cosmology),as well as more fundamental and theoretical issues,covered by N Nekrasov (Non-perturbative Aspects of Supersymmetric Gauge Theories), P Townsend (Branes in Field Theory, notincluded in these proceedings) and Jaume Gomis (Tachyon Condensation: Towards Time DependentBackgrounds and Holography).We must thank the lecturers for their admirable exposition ofthese interesting subjects. We hope that the readers of theseproceedings receive these lectures with the same enthusiasmas they were received by all students and physicists that attended the School.Following the tradition of the RTN schools there were, in addition to thelectures, five workgroups on more specialized subjects,which aimed todiscuss scientific problems of general interest to our network, facilitate communication between the various groups and,hopefully, help start new collaborations. They wereIntegrable Structures of the Gauge/String Correspondence ledby G Arutyunov and B StefanskiClosed Timelike Curves in Supergravity and String Theory ledby N Drukker and L MaozBlack Objects in Higher Dimensional General Relativity andSupergravity led by H Elvang and T HarmarkN=1/2 Supersymmetric Theories led by W MueckE10 and E11 as M-theory Symmetries led by A Keurentjes.As expected, these workgroups produced many stimulating and enlighteningdiscussions.The School was financed by the RTN, the University of Barcelona, ICREA and the Generalitat deCatalunya. The local organizers were R Emparan, Joaquim Gomis, T Mateos, P K Townsend and myself.The Scientific Board were E Imeroni (Universiteit Utrecht), A Lerda (Università del Piemonte Orientale), M Lledó (Universitat de València), D Lust (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), K Stelle (ImperialCollege London), A Van Proeyen (Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven), P Di Vecchia (Nordita, Copenhagen) andD Zanon (Università di Milano 1). We thank all of them and especially theparticipants for making the School possible.