String Theory

Three Japanese-language lectures connect string-like structures across fundamental physics, life and cosmology. The first examines the long effort to combine quantum theory and general relativity, explaining how string theory uses topology and duality to develop new accounts of matter and spacetime. The second turns to DNA: genetic information must be copied accurately and distributed to daughter cells despite the molecule’s fragility and tendency to become tangled. It explains chromosome organisation and the role of condensin proteins in folding DNA into structures that make this process possible. The third discusses how string theory changes our view of the expanding universe, black holes and spacetime. Developments in string-theoretic cosmology are considered alongside advances in astronomical observations. Together, the lectures offer accessible explanations of how these different research programmes use the idea of a string, without equating their scientific claims. Online attendance is free with advance registration.

Benjamin Safdi studies the axion mass constraints obtained when grand unification and string theory are considered together with the QCD axion. Unitarity reasoning and explicit string compactifications, including examples from the Kreuzer–Skarke type-IIB ensemble, favor masses between 10^-11 and 10^-8 electronvolts. The talk explains how these theoretical frameworks combine to restrict a candidate extension of the Standard Model.