Final Report: "Strings 2014"

DOE Final Report “Strings 2014” PI: Edward Witten, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ 08540 CO-PI: Igor Klebanov, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540 DOE Grant Number: DE-SC0011919 The Strings 2014 meeting was held at Princeton University in June 2014, co-sponsored by Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. Plenary lectures at Strings 2014 were held in Richardson Auditorium of Princeton University. This comfortable and spacious facility easily accommodated the 616 participants registered participants at Strings 2014. The rental fee for the auditorium was $11,000. This grant provided $5,500 from the Department of Energy to pay for one-half of the cost of the facility rental and videotaping. Speakers were supported with funds from the National Science Foundation Clay Mathematics Institute, the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University. The organization of Strings 2014 consisted of an International Organizing Committee of 60 prominent scientists around the world, and a Local Advisory Committee consisting of an additional 15 distinguished scientists from neighboring institutions. Additionally, the Local Organizing Committee assisted them with about 15 members (mostly faculty at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study). These groups (which are listed at the end of this narrative) offered important input concerning the selectionmore » of speakers and helped to ensure that the speakers were selected from the broadest possible pool. The conference was held on June 23-7 at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. The 616 registered participants included 272 participants from the United States and 344 from 32 institutions outside of the U.S. We believe that we were successful at providing a stimulating and up-to-date overview of research in string theory and its relations to other areas of physics and mathematics, ranging from geometry to quantum field theory, condensed matter physics, and more. There were a total of 45 plenary speakers and 27 speakers at parallel sessions. (Parallel sessions were held at the Institute for Advanced Study.) Overall the speakers did an excellent job of presenting their topics and some presented surprising and novel results. The talks at Strings 2014 were videotaped and are available on the conference website: http://physics.princeton.edustrings2014/Talk_titles.shtml. One important facet of Strings 2014 and one of the reasons it was so well-attended was that it had a strong educational component. The week before the meeting, there was a summer school, Prospects in Theoretical Physics (PiTP), held at the Institute for Advanced Study on the subject of string theory. 260 graduate students attended both PiTP and Strings 2014. The group consisted of 25 females and 235 males; 208 graduate students and 52 postdocs. 129 participants were from the United States, and 131 participants came from institutions in 25 countries outside of the U.S. The Institute for Advanced Study substantially subsidized the summer school for students. Over two dozen students had the chance to give short (six minute) talks at the “gong shows” that were held at PiTP and Strings 2014, and nearly 60 students and postdocs made poster presentations at Strings 2014.« less