Lectures on Heterotic-Type I Duality

In the last couple of years, there has been remarkable progress in understanding non-perturbative aspects of string theories. The new ingredient is the discovery of various duality symmetries; these, in particular, invert the coupling constant and exchange perturbative states with non-perturbative solitonic excitations. Since inversion of the coupling involves the Planck constant ħ, duality symmetries can be realized only at the quantum level. Once the dual models are identified, non-perturbative dynamics of one model can be studied by means of the standard perturbative techniques in the other model.