Department of

Mathematics

Seminar Calendar
for Mathematical Physics events the year of Wednesday, September 11, 2019.

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events for the
events containing

Questions regarding events or the calendar should be directed to Tori Corkery.
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Monday, February 4, 2019

12:00 pm in 343 Altgeld Hall,Monday, February 4, 2019

The integration problem for Courant algebroids

Rajan Mehta (Smith College)

Abstract: Courant algebroids originally appeared in the study of constrained Hamiltonian systems, but they are connected to many areas of mathematical physics, including multisymplectic geometry, double field theory, and (my personal interest) 3-dimensional topological field theory. Since a Courant structure involves a bracket that resembles a Lie bracket (but fails to be skew-symmetric), one might expect there to be some groupoid-like structure for which a Courant algebroid is the infinitesimal object. There is reason to believe that the answer should be a "symplectic 2-groupoid," but there are many devils in the details, including even the question of how "symplectic 2-groupoid" should be defined. I will describe various developments in this problem.

Thursday, March 14, 2019

12:30 pm in 464 Loomis,Thursday, March 14, 2019

A proposal for nonabelian mirrors in two-dimensional theories

Eric Sharpe (Virginia Tech)

Abstract: In this talk we will describe a proposal for nonabelian mirrors to two-dimensional (2,2) supersymmetric gauge theories, generalizing the Hori-Vafa construction for abelian gauge theories. By applying this to spaces realized as symplectic quotients, one can derive B-twisted Landau-Ginzburg orbifolds whose classical physics encodes quantum cohomology rings of those spaces. The proposal has been checked in a variety of cases, but for sake of time the talk will focus on exploring the proposal in the special case of Grassmannians.

Thursday, September 5, 2019

1:00 pm in 464 Loomis,Thursday, September 5, 2019

FROM LOCALITY TO NON-LOCALITY: FERMIONIC ENTANGLEMENT ON THE TORUS

Ignacio A. Reyes (Max Planck Institute, Potsdam)

Abstract: We uncover various novel aspects of the entanglement of free fermions at finite temperature on the circle. The modular flow involves a bi-local coupling between a discrete but infinite set of points, even for a single interval. The modular Hamiltonian transitions from locality to complete non-locality as a function of temperature. We derive the entanglement and relative entropies, and comment on the applications to bulk reconstruction in higher spin holography.

Thursday, September 12, 2019

1:00 pm in 464 Loomis,Thursday, September 12, 2019

EXPERIMENTS WITH MACHINE LEARNING IN STRING GEOMETRY

Vishnu Jejjala (University of Witwatersrand)

Abstract: Identifying patterns in data enables us to formulate questions that can lead to exact results. Since many of the patterns are subtle, machine learning has emerged as a useful tool in discovering these relationships. We show that topological features of Calabi–Yau geometries are machine learnable. We indicate the broad applicability of our methods to existing large data sets by finding relations between knot invariants, in particular, the hyperbolic volume of the knot complement and the Jones polynomial.

Thursday, September 19, 2019

1:00 pm in 464 Loomis,Thursday, September 19, 2019

QUANTUM GRAVITY AND THE SWAMPLAND

Gary Shiu (University of Wisconsin)

Abstract: String theory seems to offer an enormous number of possibilities for low energy physics. The huge set of solutions is often known as the String Theory Landscape. In recent years, however, it has become clear that not all quantum field theories can be consistently coupled to gravity. Theories that cannot be ultraviolet completed in quantum gravity are said to be in the Swampland. In this talk, I’ll discuss some conjectured properties of quantum gravity, evidences for them, and their applications to cosmology.

Thursday, September 26, 2019

1:00 pm in 464 Loomis,Thursday, September 26, 2019