Strings and Branes – New Paradigm of theoretical physics –

Abstract : String Theory is expected to provide the framework combining the principles of relativity and quantum. There have been the revolutionary developments in the string theory since the discovery of the branes in 1994., which lead to the many deep and new properties of the theory. The most important newly discovered property may be the so-called AdS-CFT correspondence or the holography principle. This relates the strongly interacting theory with the corresponding effective gravity theory in one dimension higher spacetime. We will introduce the duality concept while reviewing particles and solitions. After brief reviews on the strings and branes, the holographic idea as an ingredient of the new paradigm will be explained with some examples.