Koszul duality in QFT

11/13/2023 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm
CMSA Room G10
Address: CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

Speaker: Brian Williams (Boston University)

Title: Koszul duality in QFT

Abstract: We will describe appearances of the algebraic phenomena of Koszul duality in the context of boundary conditions and defects in quantum field theory. Primarily motivated by topological string theory, this point of view was pioneered by Costello and Li in their proposal for a twisted version of the AdS/CFT correspondence. Since then, many important examples of (twisted) holographic dualities in string and M-theory have been studied in work of Costello, Gaiotto, Paquette and many others. I will survey some of these examples and some current work with Raghavendran and Saberi which uses this formalism to predict exceptional symmetries present in M-theory.