The birth of string theory

H Itoyama

doi:10.1093/ptep/ptw063

Abstract

This is a brief summary of an introductory lecture for students and scholars in general given by the author at Nambu Memorial Symposium which was held at Osaka City University on September 29, 2015. We review the invention of string theory by Professor Yoichiro Nambu following the discovery of the Veneziano amplitude. We also discuss Professor Nambu's proposal on string theory in the Schild gauge in 1976 which is related to the matrix model of Yang-Mills type.

Highlights

In 1949, Professor Yoichiro Nambu started his career at Osaka City University where this memorial symposium was held
On September 29, 2015, ten speakers contributed to the idea of the symposium
The role of the author was to review the birth of string theory, which is a wellknown unpublished work [1] of Nambu

Summary

Introduction

In 1949, Professor Yoichiro Nambu started his career at Osaka City University where this memorial symposium was held. For a pedagogical reason as well as for the sake of presentation, the developments based on the path integral method before and after his work were included. In the latter part of the talk, a less well-known proposal of Nambu in the quantization and discretization of the string theory in the Schild gauge in [3] was brought to the audience. In order to set a current context of that proposal, we include a general discussion of matrix models

Veneziano amplitude and Koba-Nielsen form

Discovery of Nambu-Goto string

Path integral quantization of string

Matrix model of Yang-Mills Type and Nambu’s Proposal