QCD, strings and black holes: A duality between gravity and field theory

Bell Lecture: Professor Juan Maldacena, Institute for Advanced Study. Abstract: The theory of strong interactions, QCD, has excitations that are well described by strings. These strings appear most simply in theories with a large number of colors, instead of the three colors we have in QCD. For theories that are similar in spirit to QCD one can relate these gauge theory strings to the strings of quantum gravity. In particular, some ten dimensional geometries are associated to four dimensional quantum field theories. We will describe how to use this relation to learn about strongly interacting quantum field theories. This relation also elucidates the black hole information puzzle.