In
physics
Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...
, U-duality (short for unified duality)
[S. Mizoguchi,]
On discrete U-duality in M-theory
, 2000. is a symmetry of
string theory
In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and intera ...
or
M-theory
In physics, M-theory is a theory that unifies all Consistency, consistent versions of superstring theory. Edward Witten first conjectured the existence of such a theory at a string theory conference at the University of Southern California in 1 ...
combining
S-duality and
T-duality transformations. The term is most often met in the context of the "U-duality (symmetry) group" of M-theory as defined on a particular background space (
topological manifold
In topology, a topological manifold is a topological space that locally resembles real ''n''- dimensional Euclidean space. Topological manifolds are an important class of topological spaces, with applications throughout mathematics. All manifolds ...
). This is the union of all the S-duality and T-duality available in that topology. The narrow meaning of the word "U-duality" is one of those dualities that can be classified neither as an S-duality, nor as a T-duality - a transformation that exchanges a large geometry of one theory with the strong coupling of another theory, for example.
References
String theory
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