Strings for Quantumchromodynamics

Abstract

During the last ten years, intriguing dualities between gauge and string theory have been found and explored. They provide a novel window on strongly coupled gauge physics, including QCD-like models. Based on a short historical review of modern string theory, we shall explain how so-called AdS/CFT dualities emerged at the end of the 1990s. Some of their concrete implications and remarkable recent progress are then illustrated for the simplest example, namely the multicolor limit of \N=4 Super Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions. We end with a few comments on existing extensions to more realistic models and applications, in particular to strongly coupled quark gluon plasmas. This text is meant as a non-technical introduction to gauge/string dualities for (particle) physicists.