Seminar returns

Last week saw the first seminar of this fall semester. We are meeting on Wednesdays, 2:15 PM at Eitan’s office (Math 2-122).

This week’s seminar (October 15th) will be about Instantons from the physics side.

Return from the summer

Exactly a week ago I took my oral exam and passed, and soon it will be Eitan’s turn. This explains why things have been a bit quite around here. The bad news is that things will remain quite for a bit longer.

The good news is that we are planning to start again the meetings during the fall with topological field theory! I know nothing about this, erm, field. It will take some time to read and prepare something. But I already started to look into some notes on the arXiv:

• A mini-course on topological strings. hep-th/0504147
• Aspects of Chern-Simons Theory. hep-th/9902115

I will probably take care of the physics part, which is mostly included in the second link. Hopefully we can do some quantum stuff.

Week 07 seminar

Anybody has problems with the seminar being tomorrow (Wednesday) at 3:30 PM? The topic will be Electroweak and a bit of Yang-Mills.

Fourth Week’s seminar

Brandon has requested we change the time so he can make a train, that selfish bastard. So would Wednesday (tomorrow) at 3:30 be ok with people?

Third week seminar

This Thursday we will meet at 3:30 PM. Brandon will continiue his discussion on bundles.

This week’s seminar

We will meet this Thursday, 3:10 PM at Eitan’s office (Math 2-122). I will be talking about electromagnetism.

Seminar time

So far the arranged time for the seminar is Thursdays @ 3:10 PM. Let your voice be heard if you have issues.

This week Brandon will talk about fiber bundles.

Gauge theory seminar

Let us have a gauge theory seminar! Here are some of references that might be useful:

• Gauge theories in Particle Physics by Aitchison & Hey. This is for some of the physics basics.
• Geometry, topology and physics by Nakahara. General mathematical background.
• The geometry of physics by Frankel. More general mathematical background.
• The conceptual basis of quantum field theory by ‘t Hooft. Basics of QFT. Can be found here.
• Preparation for Gauge Theory by Svetlichny. More specific mathematical background. Can be found at the arXiv.
• The geometrical setting of gauge theories of the Yang-Mills type by Daniel and Viallet. Yet more specific mathematics. Can be found here.

Suggestions are welcomed.