The areas covered in this volume include: duality in string theory and supersymmetric gauge theories; phenomenological applications of string theory; strings in curved spacetime; quantum gravity; SUSY conformal field theories; QCD strings; aspects of mathematical physics, including: mirror symmetry, W-algebras, representation theory.

This thesis describes the structures of six-dimensional (6d) superconformal field theories and its torus compactifications. The first half summarizes various aspects of 6d field theories, while the latter half investigates torus compactifications of these theories, and relates them to four-dimensional superconformal field theories in the class, called class S. It is known that compactifications of 6d conformal field theories with maximal supersymmetries provide numerous insights into four-dimensional superconformal field theories. This thesis generalizes the story to the theories with smaller supersymmetry, constructing those six-dimensional theories as brane configurations in the M-theory, and highlighting the importance of fractionalization of M5-branes. This result establishes new dualities between the theories with eight supercharges.

This book is aimed at graduate students and researchers in physics and mathematics who seek to understand the basics of supersymmetry from a mathematical point of view. It provides a bridge between the physical and mathematical approaches to the superworld. The physicist who is devoted to learning the basics of supergeometry can find a friendly approach here, since only the concepts that are strictly necessary are introduced. On the other hand, the mathematician who wants to learn from physics will find that all the mathematical assumptions are firmly rooted in physical concepts. This may open up a channel of communication between the two communities working on different aspects of supersymmetry.Starting from special relativity and Minkowski space, the idea of conformal space and superspace is built step by step in a mathematically rigorous way, and always connecting with the ideas and notation used in physics. While the book is mainly devoted to these important physical examples of superspaces, it can also be used as an introduction to the field of supergeometry, where a reader can ease into the subject without being overwhelmed with the technical difficulties.

String theory is a model of fundamental physics whose building blocks are one-dimensional extended objects called strings, rather than the zero-dimensional point particles that form the basis for the standard model of particle physics. The phrase is often used as shorthand for Superstring theory, as well as related theories such as M-theory. By replacing the point-like particles with strings, an apparently consistent quantum theory of gravity emerges. Moreover, it may be possible to 'unify' the known natural forces (gravitational, electromagnetic, weak nuclear and strong nuclear) by describing them with the same set of equations. Studies of string theory have revealed that it predicts higher-dimensional objects called branes. String theory strongly suggests the existence of ten or eleven (in M-theory) space-time dimensions, as opposed to the usual four (three spatial and one temporal) used in relativity theory.