QCD and String Theory

Coordinators: Ofer Aharony, Martin Beneke, Matthew J. Strassler, Arkady I. Vainshtein

This conference is intended to bring together leading researchers working on QCD, string theory, and the relation between the two. It will cover many aspects of the connection between QCD and string theory, and will also represent subjects where such a connection has not yet been formulated, hoping to inspire new directions of research. Topics will include confinement, hadronic spectrum and structure, baryons at large N, applications of conformal symmetry to QCD, new methods in perturbative calculations, physics(experimental and theoretical) of heavy ion collisions, small-x physics(experimental and theoretical), the AdS/CFT correspondence and more general dualities between open strings and closed strings, applications of string theory to strong-coupling electroweak symmetry breaking, and results at finite Nf/Nc.

The audience at the conference will include physicists from a wide variety of backgrounds, and the speakers have been asked to plan their presentations accordingly. The number of talks will be limited to six 45-minute talks per day(with no talks on Wednesday afternoon) and extended discussions will be encouraged.

The list of speakers will include :

Niklas Beisert(AEI, Potsdam)
Zvi Bern(UCLA)
Freddy Cachazo(IAS)
Nissan Itzhaki(Princeton)
Dimitra Karabali(CUNY)
Andreas Karch(Washington)
Valentin V. Khoze(Durham)
Gregory P. Korchemsky(LPT, Orsay)
Alex Kovner(Connecticut)
Julius Kuti(UCSD)
Oleg Lunin(IAS)
Aneesh Manohar(UCSD)
Giuseppe Marchesini(Milano-Bicocca)
Hirosi Ooguri(Caltech)
Joe Polchinski(KITP)
Leonardo Rastelli(Princeton)
Mikhail Shifman(Minnesota)
Edward Shuryak(SUNY)
Dam Thanh Son(Washington)
Matthias Staudacher(AEI, Potsdam)
Raman Sundrum(Johns Hopkins)
Guenter Wolf(DESY)
Laurence Yaffe(Washington)
William Zajc(Columbia)
Valentin Zakharov(MPI, Munich)

Topics include confinement, hadronic spectrum and structure, baryons at large N, applications of conformal symmetry to QCD, new methods in perturbative calculations, physics(experimental and theoretical) of heavy ion collisions, small-x physics(experimental and theoretical), the AdS/CFT correspondence and more general dualities between open and closed strings, applications of string theory to strong-coupling electroweak symmetry breaking, and results at finite Nf/Nc.