Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar Speaker: Sebastian Haney, Harvard Title: Homological mirror symmetry for Coulomb branches Abstract: I will describe a result of Aganagic, Danilenko, Li, Shende, and Zhou which constructs a embeddings of certain cylindrical KLRW categories into Fukaya-Seidel categories of multiplicative Coulomb branches. This can be thought of as a homological mirror symmetry statement relating the […]
Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar Speaker: Lorenzo Riva, CMSA Title: Aganagic’s invariant is Khovanov homology Abstract: Webster computed the Khovanov homology of (the closure of) a braid in terms of the action of that braid on a certain KLRW category. Aganagic proposed that the same computation could be done in the Fukaya-Seidel category of the multiplicative Coulomb […]
CMSA Q&A Seminar Speaker: Dan Freed, CMSA Topic: Constructions of homotopy types in geometry and physics
Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar Speaker: tba
Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar Speaker: Daniel Spiegel, Harvard Title: The Quasi-Adiabatic Theorem and All That Abstract: Yosuke Kubota has recently made progress on understanding Kitaev's conjecture by constructing a loop spectrum consisting of spaces of quantum spin systems, indexed by spatial dimension of the lattice (arXiv: 2503.12618). After a brief reminder on the C*-algebraic […]
Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar Speakers: Dan Freed and Bowen Yang, Harvard CMSA Title: More on Kubota's spectrum of invertible states Abstract: Bowen will explain a construction aptly dubbed “Kitaev’s pump” in Kubota’s paper. Time permitting, Bowen will demonstrate its ubiquity throughout the study of topological phases, where it appears under various guises. In the second hour, […]
CMSA Q&A Seminar Speaker: Ludmil Katzarkov, University of Miami Title: New Birational Invariants Abstract: We will introduce the origins of the main ideas of the theory of atoms. Applications follow. Equivariant and mixed atoms will be considered.
CMSA Q&A Seminar Speaker: James Eldred Pascoe, Drexel University Title: (What is) The tracial fundamental group and free universal monodromy? Abstract: We introduce the tracial fundamental group to classify the analytic continuation of functions that are locally behave like the trace of natural matrix valued functions. While globally defined natural matrix-valued functions (known as free […]
Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar Speaker: Saman Habibi Esfahani (CMSA) Title: Geometric structures on gauge theoretic moduli spaces Abstract: Motivated by Witten’s study of instantons on S3 x S1, we survey some classical and recent results, programs, and conjectures on geometric structures, such as symplectic and hyperkahler, on moduli spaces of instantons and monopoles on various […]
CMSA Q&A Seminar Speaker: Dan Freed, Harvard Topic: How does one navigate the job market as a postdoc in 2026?
Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar Speaker: William Stewart Title: Constructing oriented TQFTs from twisted pivotal tensor categories Abstract: The cobordism hypothesis classifies n-dimensional oriented TQFTs in terms of SO(n) homotopy fixed point data. An SO(2) homotopy fixed point structure on a finite tensor category gives rise to a twisted pivotal structure (a more general notion […]
Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar Speakers: Max Hübner, CMSA Title: Bi-HKT Manifolds, Sigma Models, Large N=4 and their String Constructions Abstract: We continue our review of Witten's paper "Instantons and the Large N=4 Algebra". We discuss the realization of large N=4 supersymmetry in the context of supersymmetric sigma-models, and discuss and motivate string theoretic duals […]