Gravity and Strings

Preface; Part I. Introduction to Gravity and Supergravity: 1. Differential geometry; 2. Noether's theorems; 3. A perturbative introduction to general relativity; 4. Action principles for gravity; 5. N = 1, 2, d = 4 supergravities; 6. Conserved charges in general relativity; Part II. Gravitating Point-Particles: 7. The Schwarzschild black hole; 8. The Reissner-Nordstroem black hole; 9. The Taub-NUT solution; 10. Gravitational pp-waves; 11. The Kaluza-Klein black hole; 12. Dilaton and dilaton/axion black holes; 13. Unbroken supersymmetry; Part III. Gravitating Extended Objects of String Theory: 14. String theory; 15. The string effective action and T duality; 16. From eleven to four dimensions; 17. The type-IIB superstring and type-II T duality; 18. Extended objects; 19. The extended objects of string theory; 20. String black holes in four and five dimensions; Appendix A. Lie groups, symmetric spaces and Yang-Mills fields; Appendix B. Gamma matrices and spinors; Appendix C. n-Spheres; Appendix D. Palatini's identity; Appendix E. Conformal rescalings; Appendix F. Connections and curvature components; Appendix G. The harmonic operator on R3 x S1; References; Index.