Oxford

In this talk I will describe how to make sense of the function $(1+t)^x$ over the integers. I will explain how different rings of analytic functions can be defined over the integers, and how this leads to global analytic geometry and global Hodge theory. If time permits I will also describe an analytic version of lambda-rings and how this can be used to define a cohomology theory for schemes over Z. This is joint work with Federico Bambozzi and Adam Topaz. 

Let $X$ be a K3 surface and let $Z_X(q)$ be the generating series of the topological Euler characteristics of the Hilbert scheme of points on $X$. It is known that $q/Z_X(q)$ equals the discriminant form $\Delta(\tau)$ after the change of variables $q=e^{2 \pi i \tau}$. In this talk we consider the equivariant generalization of this result, when a finite group $G$ acts on $X$ symplectically. Mukai and Xiao has shown that there are exactly 81 possibilities for such an action in terms of types of the fixed points. The analogue of $q/Z_X(q)$ in each of the 81 cases turns out to be a cusp form (after the same change of variables). Knowledge of modular forms is not assumed in the talk; I will introduce all necessary concepts. Joint work with Jim Bryan.

String compactifications are essential for connecting string theory to low energy particle physics and cosmology. Moduli stabilisation gives rise to effective Lagrangians that capture the low-energy degrees of freedom. Much recent interest has been on swampland consistency conditions on such effective
field theories - which low energy Lagrangians can arise from quantum gravity? Furthermore, given that moduli stabilisation scenarios often exist in AdS space, we can also ask: what do swampland conditions mean in the context of AdS/CFT? I describe work on developing a holographic understanding of moduli stabilisation and swampland consistency conditions. I focus in particular on the Large Volume Scenario, which is especially appealing from a holographic perspective as in the large volume limit all its interactions can be expressed solely in terms of the AdS radius, with no free dimensionless parameters.

I will review the idea that entanglement must ultimately be understood in terms of modes, rather than in terms of particles. The most striking instance of mode entanglement is a single particle entangled state, which I will discuss both in the case of bosons as well as in the case of fermions. I then proceed to show that the Aharonov-Bohm effect can be understood by using a single electron entangled state. Finally, I will argue that this demonstrates beyond doubt that the Aharonov-Bohm effect is non non-local, contrary to what is frequently claimed in the literature.

The first examples of complete holonomy G2 metrics were constructed by Bryant-Salamon and are thus of central importance in geometry, but also in physics, appearing for example in the work of Atiyah-Witten, Acharya-Witten and Acharya-Gukov.   I will describe joint work in progress with Spiro Karigiannis which realises Bryant-Salamon manifolds in dimension 7 as coassociative fibrations.  In particular, I will discuss the relationship of this study to gravitational instantons, conical singularities, and to recent work of Donaldson and Joyce-Karigiannis.

Six-dimensional theories provide a unification of four-dimensional theories via dimensional reduction  together with access to some of the novel features arising from M-theory.  Ambitwistor strings directly generate S-matrices for massless theories in terms of formulae that localize on the solutions to the scattering equations; algebraic equations that determine n points on the Riemann sphere from n massless momenta.  These are sufficient to provide compact formulae for tree-level S-matrices for bosonic theories. This talk introduces their extension to the polarized scattering equations which arise from twistorial versions on ambitwistor-strings.  These lead to simple explicit formulae for superamplitudes in 6D for super Yang-Mills, supergravity, D5 and M5 branes and massive superamplitudes in 4D.  The framework extends also to 10 and 11 dimensions.  This is based on joint work with Yvonne Geyer, arxiv:1812.05548 and 1901.00134. 

The stack of Higgs bundles of a given rank and degree over a non-singular projective curve can be stratified in two ways: according to its Higgs Harder-Narasimhan type (its instability type) and according to the Harder-Narasimhan type of the underlying vector bundle (instability type of the underlying bundle). The semistable stratum is an open stratum of the former and admits a coarse moduli space, namely the moduli space of semistable Higgs bundles. It can be constructed using Geometric Invariant Theory (GIT) and is a widely studied moduli space due to its rich geometric structure.

In this talk I will explain how recent advances in Non-Reductive GIT can be used to refine the Higgs Harder-Narasimhan and Harder-Narasimhan stratifications in such a way that each refined stratum admits a coarse moduli space. I will explicitly describe these refined stratifications and their intersection in the case of rank 2 Higgs bundles, and discuss the topology and geometry of the corresponding moduli spaces

Finding Riemannian metrics with holonomy G_2 is a challenging problem with links in mathematics to Einstein metrics and area-minimizing submanifolds, and to M-theory in theoretical physics.  I will provide a brief survey on recent progress towards studying this problem using a geometric flow approach, including connections to calibrated fibrations.

Snapshot mosaic multispectral imagery acquires an undersampled data cube by acquiring a single spectral measurement per spatial pixel. Sensors which acquire p frequencies, therefore, suffer from severe 1/p undersampling of the full data cube.  We show that the missing entries can be accurately imputed using non-convex techniques from sparse approximation and matrix completion initialised with traditional demosaicing algorithms.