2000/02/02 by Washington Taylor, Taylor, Washington
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-th/0002016
80 pages, 4 figures, LaTeX; Lectures for NATO school "Quantum Geometry", Iceland 1999; v2: references added
arxiv created 2000/02/14 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
These lecture notes give a pedagogical and (mostly) self-contained review of some basic aspects of the Matrix model of M-theory. The derivations of the model as a regularized supermembrane theory and as the discrete light-cone quantization of M-theory are presented. The construction of M-theory objects from matrices is described, and gravitational interactions between these objects are derived using Yang-Mills perturbation theory. Generalizations of the model to compact and curved space-times are discussed, and the current status of the theory is reviewed.