On this page, you can find helpful resources to learn string field theory (SFT). For each topic, references are listed by approximate (and subjective!) increasing difficulty and recency.
Modern introductions
- Erler – Four Lectures on Closed String Field Theory (lecture notes, arXiv:1905.06785)
- Zwiebach – Closed String Field Theory: Quantum Action and the BV Master Equation (paper, arXiv:hep-th/9206084)
- Sen – Superstring Perturbation Theory (videos, handwritten notes, 2016)
- de Lacroix, Erbin, Kashyap, Sen, Verma – Closed Superstring Field Theory and its Applications (review, arXiv:1703.06410)
- Sen – Off-shell Amplitudes in Superstring Theory (paper, arXiv:1408.0571)
Analytic solutions
- Erler – Four Lectures on Analytic Solutions in Open String Field Theory (lecture notes, arXiv:1912.00521)
- Okawa – Analytic Methods in Open String Field Theory (review, 2012)
- Fuchs, Kroyter – Analytical Solutions of Open String Field Theory (review, arXiv:0807.4722)
Level truncation
- Taylor, Zwiebach – D-Branes, Tachyons, and String Field Theory (lecture notes, arXiv:hep-th/0311017)
- Sen – Tachyon Dynamics in Open String Theory (review, arXiv:hep-th/0410103)
Worldsheet string theory
Several aspects of the worldsheet formulation of string theory are central to SFT. Of particular importance are CFTs, the characterization of the spectrum through the BRST quantization, and the computation of scattering amplitudes (as integrals over Riemann surface moduli spaces). There are several useful books and reviews which present these concepts in a useful way to make contact with SFT.
- Polchinski – String theory, volume 1 (book, 2005)
- Israel – Lectures Notes on String Theory (lecture notes, 2020)
- Wray – An Introduction to String Theory (lecture notes, 2011)