Vortices do amazing things. They dance, they tie themselves in knots, they challenge mathematicians to explain them. In this case Étienne Ghys, CNRS Directeur de Recherche at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon takes on the task of explaining.
Oxford Mathematics was pleased to host this lecture as part of the Clay Mathematics Institute’s 2015 Research Conference.
Recent progress in Ambitwistor strings
Abstract
New ambitwistor string models are presented for a variety of theories and older models are shown to work at 1 loop and perhaps higher using a simpler formulation on the Riemann sphere.
Properties of random groups.
Abstract
Many people talk about properties that you would expect of a group. When they say this they are considering random groups, I will define what it means to pick a random group in one of many models and will give some properties that these groups will have with overwhelming probability. I will look at the proof of some of these results although the talk will mainly avoid proving things rigorously.
The spectrum of the inertia operator on the motivic Hall algebra
Abstract
Following an idea of Bridgeland, we study the operator on the K-group of algebraic stacks, which takes a stack to its inertia stack. We prove that the inertia operator is diagonalizable when restricted to nice enough stacks, including those with algebra stabilizers. We use these results to prove a structure theorem for the motivic Hall algebra of a projective variety, and give a more conceptual definition of virtually indecomposable stack function. This is joint work with Pooya Ronagh.
Generating the Fukaya categories of Hamiltonian G-manifolds
Abstract
Let $G$ be a compact Lie group and $k$ be a field of characteristic $p\ge 0$ such that $H^*(G)$ does not have $p$-torsion. We show that a free Lagrangian orbit of a Hamiltonian $G$-action on a compact, monotone, symplectic manifold $X$ split-generates an idempotent summand of the monotone Fukaya category over $k$ if and only if it represents a non-zero object of that summand. Our result is based on: an explicit understanding of the wrapped Fukaya category through Koszul twisted complexes involving the zero-section and a cotangent fibre; and a functor canonically associated to the Hamiltonian $G$-action on $X$. Several examples can be studied in a uniform manner including toric Fano varieties and certain Grassmannians.