Reddit reviews A First Course in String Theory, 2nd Edition

Barton Zwiebach's First Course in String Theory provides a good overview of quite a complex topic. Unfortunately, even though it is meant as an introductory textbook, it is likely to be entirely incomprehensible to the average reader.

 

To make it through this book, knowledge of quite a few preliminary topics is needed:

1. Previous knowledge of Quantum Mechanics is incredibly important. MIT OpenCourseware has some useful video lectures for the beginner, as well as textbook recommendations.
   
   
2. It is necessary to be fully comfortable with the principles of Special Relativity, as well as at least familiar with the mathematics of General Relativity. Unfortunately, since I learned relativity entirely from the homemade class notes of a professor at my university, I have no textbook recommendations.
   
   
3. Even though string theory is a theory of quantum gravity, some techniques and principles from classical physics are useful. In particular, ideas from the Lagrangian formulation of mechanics come up fairly often. John Taylor's book is useful here. Knowledge of Electricity and Magnetism is also useful; for that, I recommend Griffiths.
   
   
4. It doesn't come up quite as often in this particular book, but Group Theory and Lie Algebras are ubiquitous in string theory. I liked Gilmore's book on this subject.

You have a lot of work ahead of you for sure, but this is not an impossible task. First off, I wouldn't worry too much about the Nambu-Goto action right now. Instead, you're going to need to develop quite a bit of background knowledge and mathematical tools.

Sites like Brilliant, and Youtube lectures are valuable resources, but if you're going to be successful in this endeavour, I'd recommend that you put some serious effort into learning from textbooks. The ability to learn from a textbook does not come naturally to most people, but it is a skill that can be developed and will be necessary for you to make much progress in this direction. In fact, I'd say that perhaps the most valuable thing I gained in my undergraduate degree was the ability to sit down and actually learn from a textbook in a systematic way.

The book on String Theory by Zweibach is probably going to be the best resource for you as it's a quite approachable low level string theory book designed for advanced undergraduate students. In order to read and understand it, you'll need to first gain at minimum a popular level, hand-wavy understanding of general relativity and quantum field theory and a mathematical understanding of special relativity, quantum mechanics and electromagnetism.

One book I can't recommend enough to non-professionals wanting to get a semi-serious mathematical understanding of modern physics is The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose. In my opinion, the book is a masterpiece. He starts off with "what is a number", and by the end of the first half of the book has given a serious account of fibre bundles using only the ideas introduced in the book. His explanations are lucid, engaging and very deep. The second half then uses the mathematics introduced in the first half to describe much of modern physics. He has a section where he talks about String Theory, but he isn't much of a fan of it so doesn't spend a lot of time on the topic. However, the mathematics he introduces in the first half are invaluable for understanding quantum mechanics, relativity, quantum field theory and string theory. Roger is a bit of a maverick and has some 'cooky' ideas and opinions that would make many professional physicists blush with embarrassment, but throughout the book he is very careful to clearly say when he is making a controversial statement.

I think if you pick of the Road to Reality, and manage to seriously read the first 15 chapters while also reading (or watching) introductory books / lecture series on quantum mechanics and special relativity and electromagnetism you'll be in a great place to try and get into the basics of string theory.

Also, there is A First Course in String Theory by Barton Zwiebach, a textbook about string theory specifically written for undergrads. It's definitely not an easy read, but it's not impossible to understand it.

There's Zweibach's text that was intended for senior undergrads at MIT: http://www.amazon.com/A-First-Course-String-Theory/dp/0521880327

But, most professors I've talked to suggest learning QFT and learning it really well first before tackling string theory. Some popular QFT books are Peskin and Schroeder, and Srednicki.

I believe what you are looking for is a textbook.

Check out some books about string theory, it does make a case for solving the disconnect (as you without any doubt know).

Now the thing is, string theory solves things in a really intuitive and elegant way, which - being physicist myself - truly makes me want to believe it all checks out!

Depending on where you currently are in your education (and how much you like a tough challenge :)) you may want to have a look at this(undergrad) or this (graduate, pretty dense) book - they are both pretty great!

sprichst du von echten Fachbüchern oder von allgemeinverständlicher Literatur?

Fachbücher: String theorie: barton Zwiebach
https://www.amazon.de/First-Course-String-Theory/dp/0521880327

QM: Cohen Tannoudji
https://www.amazon.de/Quantum-Mechanics-Vol-Claude-Cohen-Tannoudji/dp/047116433X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books-intl-de&ie=UTF8&qid=1465804024&sr=1-1&keywords=cohen+tannoudji