Event Type
Seminar
Tuesday, February 25, 2020 12:15 PM
Libby Taylor

Abstract: The theme for this talk will be taken from the famous physicist Randall Munroe: https://xkcd.com/171/

More specifically, we will try to understand how ideas from string theory have given rise to the math known as mirror symmetry.  Mirror symmetry describes various dualities between symplectic invariants on a manifold and complex algebrogeometric invariants on a related manifold, called its mirror.  We will explore the math behind these dualities, and will discuss (in a somewhat imprecise way) their correspondence with conjectural physical dualities coming from string theory.