Today

  • The Quasi-Adiabatic Theorem and All That

    Science Center 507 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge

    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 […]

  • More on Kubota’s spectrum of invertible states

    Science Center 507 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge

    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: Ludmil Katzarkov, University of Miami

    CMSA Q&A Seminar
    Common Room, CMSA 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

    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: James Eldred Pascoe, Drexel University

    CMSA Q&A Seminar
    Common Room, CMSA 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

    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 […]

  • Geometric structures on gauge theoretic moduli spaces

    Science Center 507 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge

    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 […]

  • Constructing oriented TQFTs from twisted pivotal tensor categories

    CMSA Room G10 CMSA, 20 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, United States

    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 […]

  • Bi-HKT Manifolds, Sigma Models, Large N=4 and their String Constructions

    Science Center 507 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge

    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 […]

  • Solitonic Symmetry: Cohomology with TFT Coefficients

    Science Center 507 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge

    Geometry and Quantum Theory Seminar Speaker: Sanjay Raman, Harvard Title: Solitonic Symmetry: Cohomology with TFT Coefficients Abstract: We review the formalism of https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.00939, which develops the theory of solitonic symmetry in quantum field theory. The algebraic structure of solitonic symmetry is determined by the fusion of topological functionals in a given path-integral formulation of topological field theory, and […]

  • 2026 Ding Shum Lecture: Sanjeev Arora, Princeton

    Featured
    Harvard Science Center 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA

    https://youtu.be/gXiVVZypHJg 2026 Ding Shum Lecture Date: March 4, 2026 Time: 4:00 pm Location: Harvard Science Center Hall D & via Zoom Webinar Speaker: Sanjeev Arora, Princeton Title: How could a Superhuman AI mathematician come about? Abstract: Can AI systems exceed the capabilities of the human experts who provided their training data? The talk will examine […]