Superstrings, gauge fields and black holes

Abstract

There has been spectacular progress in the development of string and superstring theories since its inception thirty years ago. Development in this area has never been impeded by the lack of experimental confirmation. Indeed, numerous bold and imaginative strides have been taken and the sheer elegance and logical consistency of the arguments have served as a primary motivation for string theorists to push their formulations ahead. In fact the development in this area has been so rapid that new ideas quickly become obsolete. On the other hand, this rapid development has proved to be the greatest hindrance for novices interested in this area. These notes serve as a gentle introduction to this topic. In these elementary notes, we briefly review the RNS formulation of superstring theory, GSO projection, D-branes, bosonic strings, dualities, dynamics of D-branes and the microscopic description of Bekenstein entropy of a black hole.