Readings | String Theory and Holographic Duality | Physics

There is no required textbook, but there are several suggested books and literature reviews. Lecture Notes are available for each lecture.

Casalderrey-Solana, Jorge. Gauge / String Duality, Hot QCD and Heavy Ion Collisions. Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN: 9781107022461. [Preview with Google Books]
A comprehensive discussion of applications of holographic duality to physics of the quark-gluon plasma.
Chapters 4 and 5 contain an elementary introduction to holographic duality, which I will partially follow. Part of this book can be found in arXiv:1101.0618.
Aharony, Ofer. "Large N Field Theories, String Theory and Gravity." Physics Reports 323, no. 3–4 (2000): 183–386.
Classic early review, containing many background materials on conformal field theories and anti–de Sitter spacetime.
D'Hoker, E., and D. Z. Freedman. "Supersymmetric Gauge Theories and the AdS / CFT Correspondence." High Energy Physics-theory, 2002.
Contains many nice background materials on supersymmetric field theories and supergravity, and comprehensive discussion of how to compute correlation functions. The discussion of holographic renormalization flows is great.
Zwiebach, Barton. A First Course in String Theory. Cambridge university press, 2009. ISBN: 9780521880329. [Preview with Google Books]
Chapter 23 contains a nice, short discussion of AdS / CFT.
Freedman, Daniel Z., and Antoine Van Proeyen. Supergravity. Cambridge University Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780521194013. [Preview with Google Books]
Part VIII contains a nice introduction to AdS / CFT.
Maldacena, J. M. "Lectures on AdS / CFT." High Energy Physics-theory, 2004.
Polchinski, J. "Introduction to Gauge / Gravity Duality." High Energy Physics-theory, 2010.
McGreevy, John. "Holographic Duality with a View Toward Many-body Physics." Advances in High Energy Physics 2010, no. 3–4 (2010): 1–54.
Adams, Allan, Lincoln D. Carr, et al. "Strongly Correlated Quantum Fluids: Ultracold Quantum Gases, Quantum Chromodynamic Plasmas and Holographic Duality." New Journal of Physics 14, no. 11 (2012).