Speaker: Sergei Gukov (Caltech)

Title: Going to the other side …. in algebra, topology, and maybe physics

Abstract: Inspired by Eugene Wigner’s reflections on the ‘unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences,’ this talk is about the surprising and pervasive role of a peculiar phenomenon that, a priori, seemed to have no reason to exist. Yet, it emerges across many different areas of mathematics and theoretical physics, including:

• the Kazhdan-Lusztig correspondence
• quantum invariants of 3-manifolds
• the study of 2d (0,2) boundary conditions in 3d N=2 theories
• resurgent analysis

Although each of these fields approaches the phenomenon from a different perspective, the results align in striking and unexpected ways.