During the 2023–24 academic year, the CMSA will be hosting a Colloquium series, organized by Alejandro Poveda and Kai Xu. It will take place from 4:30 – 5:30 pm (Eastern Time) in Room G10, CMSA, 20 Garden Street. All CMSA postdocs/members are required to attend the weekly CMSA Colloquium series as well as the weekly CMSA Members’ Seminars. The schedule will be updated as talks are confirmed.

CMSA COVID-19 Policies



  • October 13, 2021 01:00 PM
Speaker: Alexei Oblomkov
Title: Knot homology and sheaves on the Hilbert scheme of points on the plane.
Venue: Virtual

Abstract: The knot homology (defined by Khovavov, Rozansky) provide us with a refinement of the knot polynomial knot invariant defined by Jones. However, the knot homology are much harder to compute compared to the polynomial invariant of Jones. In my talk I present recent developments that allow us to use tools of algebraic geometry to compute the homology of torus knots and prove long-standing conjecture on the Poincare duality the knot homology. In more details, using physics ideas of Kapustin-Rozansky-Saulina, in the joint work with Rozansky, we provide a mathematical construction that associates to a braid on n strands a complex of sheaves on the Hilbert scheme of n points on the plane. The knot homology of the…

  • October 06, 2021 03:03 PM
Speaker: Piotr Sulkowski
Title: Strings, knots and quivers
Venue: Virtual

Abstract: I will discuss a recently discovered relation between quivers and knots, as well as – more generally – toric Calabi-Yau manifolds. In the context of knots this relation is referred to as the knots-quivers correspondence, and it states that various invariants of a given knot are captured by characteristics of a certain quiver, which can be associated to this knot. Among others, this correspondence enables to prove integrality of LMOV invariants of a knot by relating them to motivic Donaldson-Thomas invariants of the corresponding quiver, it provides a new insight on knot categorification, etc. This correspondence arises from string theory interpretation and engineering of knots in brane systems in the conifold geometry; replacing the conifold by other…

  • September 29, 2021 05:15 PM
Speaker: David Jordan
Title: Langlands duality for 3 manifolds
Venue: Virtual

Abstract: Langlands duality began as a deep and still mysterious conjecture in number theory, before branching into a similarly deep and mysterious conjecture of Beilinson and Drinfeld concerning the algebraic geometry of Riemann surfaces. In this guise it was given a physical explanation in the framework of 4-dimensional super symmetric quantum field theory by Kapustin and Witten.  However to this day the Hilbert space attached to 3-manifolds, and hence the precise form of Langlands duality for them, remains a mystery. In this talk I will propose that so-called “skein modules” of 3-manifolds give natural candidates for these Hilbert spaces at generic twisting parameter Psi , and I will explain a Langlands duality in this setting, which we have conjectured…

  • September 15, 2021 02:57 PM
Speaker: Tian Yang
Title: Hyperbolic Geometry and Quantum Invariants
Venue: Virtual

Abstract: There are two very different approaches to 3-dimensional topology, the hyperbolic geometry following the work of Thurston and the quantum invariants following the work of Jones and Witten. These two approaches are related by a sequence of problems called the Volume Conjectures. In this talk, I will explain these conjectures and present some recent joint works with Ka Ho Wong related to or benefited from this relationship.

  • October 14, 2020 09:00 AM
Speaker:
Title: 10/14/2020 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • February 19, 2020 05:15 PM
Speaker:
Title: 02/19/2020 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • February 07, 2020 04:30 PM
Speaker:
Title: 2/12/2020 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • February 05, 2020 04:30 PM
Speaker:
Title: 2/5/2020 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • January 23, 2020 04:30 PM
Speaker:
Title: 1/29/2020 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • November 06, 2019 04:30 PM
Speaker:
Title: 11/6/2019 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • October 28, 2019 04:30 PM
Speaker:
Title: 10/30/2019 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • April 12, 2019 02:24 PM
Speaker:
Title: 4-19-2019 CMSA Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • April 02, 2019 02:30 PM
Speaker:
Title: 4/10/2019 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • March 21, 2019 05:15 PM
Speaker:
Title: 3/27/2019 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • March 05, 2019 05:15 PM
Speaker:
Title: 2/13/2019 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • February 28, 2019 02:30 PM
Speaker:
Title: 3/6/2019 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • February 21, 2019 02:30 PM
Speaker:
Title: 2/27/2019 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • February 14, 2019 04:30 PM
Speaker:
Title: 2/20/2019 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • February 12, 2019 04:30 PM
Speaker:
Title: 2/13/2019 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual
  • February 07, 2019 04:30 PM
Speaker:
Title: 2/7/2019 Colloquium
Venue: Virtual