Benjamin McKenna

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Damian van de Heisteeg (Harvard CMSA) Title: Symmetries and algebraicity in the flux landscape Abstract: In this talk I consider potentials coming from fluxes in string theory. The minima of these potentials trace out special loci in the moduli space of Calabi-Yau manifolds. I discuss the structure that underlies these minima from a Hodge-theoretic […]

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Uri Kol (Harvard CMSA) Title: Integrability and Hidden Symmetries in Black Hole Dynamics Abstract: The last decade has produced a number of remarkable discoveries, such as the first direct observation of gravitational waves by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration and the first black hole image taken by the Event Horizon Telescope. These discoveries mark the beginning of a […]

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Tomer Ezra (Harvard CMSA) Title: Contract Design in Combinatorial Settings Abstract: We study two combinatorial settings of the contract design problem, in which a principal wants to delegate the execution of a costly task. In the first setting, the principal delegates the task to an agent that can take any subset of a […]

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Dan Freed (Harvard Mathematics and CMSA) Title: Symmetry in quantum field theory Abstract: In joint work with Greg Moore and Constantin Teleman we show how ideas and techniques in topological field theory apply to the study of symmetry in quantum field theory. I will discuss how this came about, beginning with […]

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Chuck Doran (Harvard CMSA) Title: Modularity and Fibrations in Mirror Symmetry Abstract: We will introduce appearances of modularity in the study both of families of Calabi-Yau threefolds and of their enumerative invariants.  An important role is played by the structure of fibrations and the DHT fibration-degeneration mirror correspondence, which clarifies how these notions […]

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Farzan Vafa Title: Phase diagram and confining strings in a minimal model of nematopolar matter Abstract: We investigate a minimal model of a nematopolar system. We analytically uncover a phase diagram consisting of a locked phase where the polar order and nematic order are locked, and unlocked phases which could be […]

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Puskar Mondal Title: Global weak solutions of 3+1 dimensional vacuum Einstein equations Abstract: It is important to understand if the `solutions' of non-linear evolutionary PDEs persist for all time or become extinct in finite time through the blow-up of invariant entities. Now the question of this global existence or finite time […]

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Sunghyuk Park, Harvard CMSA Title: 3D quantum trace map Abstract: I will speak about my recent work (joint with Sam Panitch) constructing the 3d quantum trace map, a homomorphism from the Kauffman bracket skein module of an ideally triangulated 3-manifold to its (square root) quantum gluing module, thereby giving a precise relationship […]

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Sergiy Verstyuk Title: On using ML for Economics Abstract: I will introduce some tools from the field of machine learning and discuss how they can be leveraged to get a fresh perspective on economics.

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Robert Moscrop, Harvard CMSA Title: On the landscape of 4d N=2 SCFTs Abstract: Four-dimensional conformal field theories with sufficient (N = 2) supersymmetry are highly constrained. So much so, there has been an ongoing effort to classify them using only information about their moduli space of vacua. In this talk, I will review […]

CMSA Member Seminar Speaker: Jue Liu Title: Quasilocal mass for general domains in space Abstract: Diffeomorphism-invariant quasilocal mass in classical general relativity has been studied for decades, but it is still an open problem how to define quasi-local mass for general domains with multiple boundaries in space. Using the Hamiltonian formulation, we will provide a new way […]