Member Seminar Speaker: Zhigang Yao Title: Principal flow, sub-manifold and boundary Abstract: While classical statistics has dealt with observations which are real numbers or elements of a real vector space, nowadays many statistical problems of high interest in the sciences deal with the analysis of data which consist of more complex objects, taking values in spaces which […]
Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar Speaker: Sam Bardwell-Evans, Boston University Title: Scattering Diagrams from Holomorphic Discs in Log Calabi-Yau Surfaces Abstract: In this talk, we construct special Lagrangian fibrations for log Calabi-Yau surfaces and scattering diagrams from Lagrangian Floer theory of the fibers. These scattering diagrams recover the algebro-geometric scattering diagrams of Gross-Pandharipande-Siebert and […]
General Relativity Seminar Speaker: Uri Kol, CMSA Title: Duality in Einstein’s Gravity Abstract: Electric-Magnetic duality has been a key feature behind our understanding of Quantum Field Theory for over a century. In this talk I will describe a similar property in Einstein’s gravity. The gravitational duality reveals, in turn, a wide range of new IR phenomena, including […]
https://youtu.be/-Kjl8WehIPw Colloquium Please note this colloquium will be held at a special time: 4:00-5:00 pm. Speaker: Subir Sachdev (Harvard) Title: Quantum statistical mechanics of charged black holes and strange metals Abstract: The Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model was introduced as a toy model of interacting fermions without any particle-like excitations. I will describe how this toy model yields […]
https://youtu.be/HUTWime3d6w New Technologies in Mathematics Seminar Speaker: Guy Gur-Ari, Google Research Title: Minerva: Solving Quantitative Reasoning Problems with Language Models Abstract: Quantitative reasoning tasks which can involve mathematics, science, and programming are often challenging for machine learning models in general and for language models in particular. We show that transformer-based language models obtain significantly better performance […]
Member Seminar Speaker: Jie Wang Title: Kahler geometry in twisted materials Abstract: Flatbands are versatile platform for realizing exotic quantum phases due to the enhanced interactions. The canonical example is Landau level where fractional quantum Hall physics exists. Although interaction is strong, the fractional quantum Hall effect is relatively well understood thanks to its model wavefunction, […]
Algebraic Geometry in String Theory Seminar Speaker: Mauricio Romo, Tsinghua University Title: GLSM, Homological projective duality and nc resolutions Abstract: Kuznetsov's Homological projective duality (HPD) in algebraic geometry is a powerful theorem that allows to extract information about semiorthogonal decompositions of derived categories of certain varieties. I will give a GLSMs perspective based on categories of B-branes. I will focus mostly on the case of Fano […]
https://youtu.be/SQlPI07LvUc New Technologies in Mathematics Speaker: Surya Ganguli, Stanford University Title: Statistical mechanics of neural networks: From the geometry of high dimensional error landscapes to beating power law neural scaling Abstract: Statistical mechanics and neural network theory have long enjoyed fruitful interactions. We will review some of our recent work in this area and then focus on […]
Colloquium Speaker: Dima Sinapova (Rutgers University) Title: The Tree Property and uncountable cardinals Abstract: In the late 19th century Cantor discovered that there are different levels of infinity. More precisely he showed that there is no bijection between the natural numbers and the real numbers, meaning that the reals are uncountable. He then went on […]
https://youtu.be/Y6YFgi6X5kE Topological Quantum Matter Seminar Speaker: Ruihua Fan, Harvard University Title: Extracting the quantum Hall conductance from a single bulk wavefunction from the modular flow Abstract: One question in the study of topological phases is to identify the topological data from the ground state wavefunction without accessing the Hamiltonian. Since local measurement is not enough, […]
Member Seminar Speaker: Ben McKenna Title: Random determinants, the elastic manifold, and landscape complexity beyond invariance Abstract: The Kac-Rice formula allows one to study the complexity of high-dimensional Gaussian random functions (meaning asymptotic counts of critical points) via the determinants of large random matrices. We present new results on determinant asymptotics for non-invariant random matrices, and […]
https://youtu.be/1v9STFWqArQ General Relativity Seminar Speaker: Nikolaos Athanasiou Title: A scale-critical trapped surface formation criterion for the Einstein-Maxwell system Abstract: Few notions within the realm of mathematical physics succeed in capturing the imagination and inspiring awe as well as that of a black hole. First encountered in the Schwarzschild solution, discovered a few months after the […]