During 2024–25, the CMSA will host a seminar on Quantum Matter in Mathematics and Physics, organized by Ahsan Khan, Robert Moscrop, and Sunghyuk Park.
This seminar will take place on Fridays at 9:00–10:30 am (Eastern Time) through October. In November, seminars will be held from 10:00–11:30 am. To learn how to attend this seminar, please fill out this form.
The schedule will be updated as talks are confirmed.
Videos are available at the Quantum Matter in Mathematics and Physics Youtube Playlist
Symmetry in quantum field theory and quantum gravity 2
Speaker: Daniel Harlow (MIT) Title: Symmetry in quantum field theory and quantum gravity 2 Abstract: In this talk I will give an overview of semi-recent work with Hirosi Ooguri arguing that three old conjectures about symmetry in quantum gravity are true in the AdS/CFT correspondence. These conjectures are 1) that there are no global symmetries […]
Defects, link invariants and exact WKB
VirtualSpeaker: Fei Yan (Rutgers) Title: Defects, link invariants and exact WKB Abstract: I will describe some of my recent work on defects in supersymmetric field theories. The first part of my talk is focused on line defects in certain large classes of 4d N=2 theories and 3d N=2 theories. I will describe geometric methods to compute the […]
Gravitational anomaly of 3 + 1 dimensional Z2 toric code with fermionic charges and ferionic loop self-statistics
Speaker: Lukasz Fidkowski (U Washington) Title: Gravitational anomaly of 3 + 1 dimensional Z2 toric code with fermionic charges and ferionic loop self-statistics Abstract: Quasiparticle excitations in 3 + 1 dimensions can be either bosons or fermions. In this work, we introduce the notion of fermionic loop excitations in 3 + 1 dimensional topological phases. Specifically, we […]
Metals with strongly correlated electrons: quantum criticality, disordered interactions, Planckian dissipation, and scale invariance
Speaker: Aavishkar Patel (UC Berkeley) Title: Metals with strongly correlated electrons: quantum criticality, disordered interactions, Planckian dissipation, and scale invariance Abstract: Metals that do not fit Landau’s famous Fermi liquid paradigm of quasiparticles are plentiful in experiments, but constructing their theoretical description is a major challenge in modern quantum many-body physics. I will describe new […]
Maximal quantum chaos of the critical Fermi surface
Speaker: Maria Tikhanovskaya (Harvard) Title: Maximal quantum chaos of the critical Fermi surface Abstract: In this talk, I will describe many-body quantum chaos in a recently proposed large-N theory for critical Fermi surfaces in two spatial dimensions, by computing out-of-time-order correlation functions. I will use the ladder identity proposed by Gu and Kitaev, and show that the […]
Kramers-Wannier-like duality defects in higher dimensions
Title: Kramers-Wannier-like duality defects in higher dimensions Abstract: I will introduce a class of non-invertible topological defects in (3 + 1)d gauge theories whose fusion rules are the higher-dimensional analogs of those of the Kramers-Wannier defect in the (1 + 1)d critical Ising model. As in the lower-dimensional case, the presence of such non-invertible defects implies self-duality […]
Quantum Oscillations of Electrical Resistivity in an Insulator
VirtualSpeaker: Lu Li (U Michigan) Title: Quantum Oscillations of Electrical Resistivity in an Insulator Abstract: In metals, orbital motions of conduction electrons are quantized in magnetic fields, which is manifested by quantum oscillations in electrical resistivity. This Landau quantization is generally absent in insulators, in which all the electrons are localized. Here we report a notable exception […]
On the absence of global anomalies of heterotic string theories
VirtualSpeaker: Yuji Tachikawa (Kavli IPMU, U Tokyo) Title: On the absence of global anomalies of heterotic string theories Abstract: Superstring theory as we know it started from the discovery by Green and Schwarz in 1984 that the perturbative anomalies of heterotic strings miraculously cancel. But the cancellation of global anomalies of heterotic strings remained an open […]
The global structure of the Standard Model and new nonperturbative processes
VirtualSpeaker: Mohamed Anber (Durham University) Title: The global structure of the Standard Model and new nonperturbative processes Abstract: It is well-established that the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics is based on su(3)Xsu(2)Xu(1) Lie-algebra. What is less appreciated, however, is that SM accommodates a Z_6 1-form global symmetry. Gauging this symmetry, or a subgroup of it, changes […]
Topological Quantum Gravity and the Ricci Flow – Part I
VirtualSpeaker: Petr Hořava (UC Berkeley) Title: Topological Quantum Gravity and the Ricci Flow – Part I Abstract: In this sequence of talks, I will describe our work with Alexander Frenkel and Stephen Randall, in which we presented a novel topological quantum gravity, relating three previously unrelated fields: Topological quantum field theories (of the cohomological type), the […]
Fall 2020 – Spring 2022 Quantum Matter in Mathematics and Physics Archive
This is the Fall 2020 - Spring 2022 Quantum Matter in Mathematics and Physics Archive page. To view current seminars, please visit the Fall 2022-Spring 2023 Quantum Matter Seminar Page As part of the program on Quantum Matter in Mathematics and Physics, the CMSA hosted two weekly seminars. The Quantum Matter/Quantum Field Theory seminar took place […]