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Seminar im Wintersemester 2015/16

Supersymmetry in Geometry and Quantum Physics


News

Organizational Meeting: Monday, October 5, 13h s.t., INF 288 HS 4
Let us know as soon as possible if you were unable to attend this meeting, but are still interested in the seminar!

Meeting time and place: INF 501, Rm 103.

The seminar will meet in INF 501, Rm 103. Our regular meeting time is Wednesday 14 s.t..

The meeting on October 21 has been canceled. The first regular meeting will be on Oct 28. Please contact us if you cannot attend at this time.

Instructors

Dr. Richard Eager, eager@mathi.uni-heidelberg.de
Prof. J. Walcher, walcher@uni-heidelberg.de

Description

Supersymmetric quantum mechanics stands at the beginning of much of the interaction between geometry/topology and quantum field/string theory in the past 25 years. It first led to a re-interpretation of classical Morse theory, and later inspired the development of Floer theory and the Fukaya category as prototypes of systems with an infinite number of degrees of freedom. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest and progress in foundational aspects of the subject, including the calculation of supersymmetric indices by localization, and the complexification of parameter space.

This seminar aims to trace supersymmetric quantum mechanics from its beginnings in papers by E. Witten from the early 1980s to three select cutting edge developments:

In addition to recent excitement, a thorough understanding of supersymmetric quantum mechanics provides an easy gateway to many other contemporary topics in mathematical physics.

Prerequisites: The seminar is aimed at Masters students and advanced Bachelor students of mathematics and physics. The early parts should be accessible with a good knowledge of undergraduate quantum mechanics of finite-dimensional systems and basic notions of differential geometry. The level of the latter parts will be adjusted to the participants' background.


Schedule of Talks

Date Speaker Title Scribe
Week 1: Oct 28 Tobias Supersymmetry in zero dimensions Menelaos
Week 2: Nov 4 Menelaos Supersymmetric quantum mechanics
Week 3: Nov 11 Michael Landau-Ginzburg models and sigma models in SQM Michael
Week 4: Nov 18 Lukas Chern-Gauss-Bonet from SQM Lukas
Week 5: Nov 25 No Seminar Thanksgiving
Week 6: Dec 2 No Seminar No Seminar
Week 7: Dec 9 Oskar Instantons in SQM and the Morse-Smale-Witten complex
Week 8: Dec 16 Sebastian Morse homotopy and A-infinity category
Week 9: Dec 17 Felix Electron-monopole system (Quantum Hall halo)
Week 9 3/4 Harry P. Xmas
Week 10: Jan 13 Benjamin Supersymmetric Lattice Models Sebastian
Week 11: Jan 20: Robert Lattice Models and Spectral Sequences
Week 12: Jan 27 Adam Equivariant Localization Adam
Week 13: Feb 3 Maximilian Gauged Linear Sigma Model / Moduli Space of Flat Connections Maximilian
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