I will discuss some recent and ongoing works on DT invariants of quivers associated to local Calabi-Yau 3-folds, and on conjectural DT4 invariants of local Calabi-Yau 4-folds, in the spirit of "physical mathematics" --- physics computations leading to potentially interesting mathematics. In the CY3 case, I will explain a recently proposed covering formula for quiver DT invariants [arXiv:2603.15334], wherein the DT invariants of some quiver Q are expressed as a sum of DT invariants of a "larger" Galois-covering quiver. I will aim to explain our partial, physics-based derivation of the covering formula. In the CY4 case, I will look at graded quivers associated to exceptional collections of coherent sheaves on local CY 4-folds and discuss what their "DT4 invariants" should look like according to our current physics intuition. These DT4 invariants are generally rational functions of various equivariant parameters of the local geometry.

A quasihomomorphism is a map that satisfies the homomorphism relation up to bounded error. Fujiwara and Kapovich proved a rigidity result for quasihomomorphisms taking values in discrete groups, showing that all quasihomomorphisms can be built from homomorphisms and sections of bounded central extensions. We study quasihomomorphisms with values in real linear algebraic groups, and prove an analogous rigidity theorem.  Based on joint work with Sami Douba, Francesco Fournier Facio, and Simon Machado.

Vertex operator algebras provide a succinct mathematical description of the chiral sector of two-dimensional conformal field theories. Various extensions of the framework of vertex operator algebras have been proposed in the literature which are capable of describing full two-dimensional conformal field theories, including both chiral and anti-chiral sectors. I will explain how the notion of a full vertex operator algebra can be elegantly described using the modern language of factorisation algebras developed by Costello and Gwilliam. This talk will be mainly based on [arXiv:2501.08412].