Edward Witten (IAS)
Title: Isadore Singer’s Work on Analytic Torsion
Abstract: I will review two famous papers of Ray and Singer on analytic torsion written approximately half a century ago. Then I will sketch the influence of analytic torsion in a variety of areas of physics including anomalies, topological field theory, and string theory.
This talk is part of a subprogram of the Mathematical Science Literature Lecture series, a Memorial Conference for the founders of index theory: Atiyah, Bott, Hirzebruch, and Singer.
Talk chair: Cumrun Vafa