All Upcoming Events

On Thursday, May 25, at 12:45 in L6, a seminar in the Strings Junior series:
Hadleigh Frost
Quantum cohomology
Further information: Poincaré, thinking of the 3-body problem, conjectured that a Hamiltonian flow on the annulus which twists the edges in opposite directions has at least two fixed points. Arnold conjectured that a Hamiltonian flow on compact X has at least as many fixed points as the sum of the Betti numbers -- in response, people like Gromov and Floer introduced tools involving spaces of curves in X which remind us of strings, CFT, etc. Witten noticed the connection. Fukaya and Ono used this to prove the conjecture, though their paper has been controversial at times. We ignore all of this and discuss one or two examples instead.
On Thursday, May 25, at 13:00 in Dalitz Institute, a seminar in the Dalitz Seminar in Fundamental Physics series:
Tevong You (Cambridge)
Implications of Decoupled New Physics (click for slides)
On Thursday, May 25, at 16:00 in L6, a seminar in the Number Theory series:
Holly Krieger (Cambridge)
Reduction of dynatomic curves
Further information: Dynatomic curves parametrize n-periodic orbits of a one-parameter family of polynomial dynamical systems. These curves lack the structure of their arithmetic-geometric analogues (modular curves of level n) but can be studied dynamically.  Morton and Silverman conjectured a dynamical analogue of the uniform boundedness conjecture (theorems of Mazur, Merel), asserting uniform bounds for the number of rational periodic points for such a family.  I will discuss recent work towards the function field version of their conjecture, including results on the reduction mod p of dynatomic curves for the quadratic polynomial family z^2+c.
On Thursday, May 25, at 16:15 in Dennis Sciama Lecture Theatre, a seminar in the Theoretical Particle Physics series:
Shin'ichiro Ando (University of Amsterdam)
The high energy neutrino sky
On Friday at 14:00 in Dennis Sciama Lecture Theatre, a seminar in the Theoretical Physics Colloquia series:
Herbert Spohn (MA@TUM)
Nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics and time-correlations for one-dimensional systems
On Friday at 15:30 in Martin Wood Lecture Theatre, Clarendon Laboratory, Parks Road, Oxford, a seminar in the Colloquia Series Seminars series:
Professor Myles Padgett, Kelvin Chair of Natural Philosophy and Vice Principal (Research) (University of Glasgow)
Ghost Imaging with Quantum Light
On Monday at 14:00 in Dennis Sciama Lecture Theatre, a seminar in the Astrophysics Colloquia series:
No Seminar (Bank Holiday)
On Monday at 14:15 in L4, a seminar in the Geometry and Analysis series:
Philip Boalch (Orsay)
Nonabelian Hodge spaces and nonlinear representation theory
Further information: The theory of connections on curves and Hitchin systems is something like a “global theory of Lie groups”, where one works over a Riemann surface rather than just at a point. We’ll describe how one can take this analogy a few steps further by attempting to make precise the class of rich geometric objects that appear in this story (including the non-compact case), and discuss their classification, outlining a theory of “Dynkin diagrams” as a step towards classifying some examples of such objects.
On Tuesday at 11:30 in Bipac Seminar Room, DWB, a seminar in the Cosmology series:
Andrew Pontzen (UCL)
Insights into non-linear structure growth from inverted initial conditions
On Tuesday at 12:00 in L4, a seminar in the Relativity series:
Paul Townsend (DAMTP Cambridge)
Supertwistors: the massless, the massive, and the AdS
Further information: Some recent applications of supertwistors to superparticle mechanics will be reviewed. First: Supertwistors allow a simple quantization of the  N-extended 4D massless superparticle, and peculiarities of massless 4D supermultiplets can then be explained by considering the quantum fate of a classical worldline CPT'' symmetry. For N=1 there is a global CPT anomaly, which explains why there is no CPT self-conjugate supermultiplet. For N=2 there is no anomaly but a Kramers degeneracy explains the doubling of states in the CPT self-conjugate hypermultiplet. Second: the bi-supertwistor formulation of the N-extended massive superparticle in 3D, 4D and 6D makes manifest a hidden’’ 2N-extended supersymmetry. It also has a simple expression in terms of hermitian 2x2 matrices over the associative division algebras R,C,H. Third: omission of the mass-shell constraint in this 3D,4D,6D bi-supertwistor action yields, as suggested  by holography, the action for a supergraviton in 4D,5D,7D AdS. Application to the near horizon AdSxS geometries of the M2,D3 and M5 brane confirms that the graviton supermultiplet has 128+128 polarisation states.
On Tuesday at 14:00 in DWB Fisher Room, a seminar in the Holography series:
Marika Taylor (U. Southampton)
AdS_3, dilaton gravity and SYK
On Tuesday at 15:45 in L4, a seminar in the Algebraic and Symplectic Geometry series:
Jack Smith (Cambridge)
Symmetries in monotone Lagrangian Floer theory
Further information: Lagrangian Floer cohomology groups are extremely hard compute in most situations. In this talk I’ll describe two ways to extract information about the self-Floer cohomology of a monotone Lagrangian possessing certain kinds of symmetry, based on the closed-open string map and the Oh spectral sequence. The focus will be on a particular family of examples, where the techniques can be combined to deduce some unusual properties.
On Thursday at 12:45 in L6, a seminar in the Strings Junior series:
Pietro Benetti Genolini
K-theory
On Thursday at 13:00 in Dalitz Institute, a seminar in the Dalitz Seminar in Fundamental Physics series:
Luigi Delle Rose (RAL & Southampton)
Wilsonian Dark Matter in String Derived Z&#8242; Model
On Thursday at 16:00 in L6, a seminar in the Number Theory series:
Rebecca Bellovin (Imperial College, London)
TBA
On Monday, June 5, at 14:00 in Dennis Sciama Lecture Theatre, a seminar in the Astrophysics Colloquia series:
Prof. Matthew Bailes (Swinburne University)
Fast Radio Bursts
On Monday, June 5, at 22:45 in L3, a seminar in the String Theory series:
Andrei Starinets (Oxford)
TBA
On Tuesday, June 6, at 12:00 in L4, a seminar in the Quantum Field Theory series:
Boris Zilber
to be announced
On Tuesday, June 6, at 14:00 in DWB Fisher Room, a seminar in the Holography series:
Oscar Campos-Dias (U. Southampton)
tba
On Thursday, June 8, at 13:00 in Dalitz Institute, a seminar in the Dalitz Seminar in Fundamental Physics series:
Thomas Cridge (DAMTP)
The Calculation of Sparticle and Higgs Decays in the Minimal and Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Models
On Thursday, June 8, at 16:00 in L6, a seminar in the Number Theory series:
Adam Harper (Warwick)
TBA
On Friday, June 9, at 11:00 in C3, a seminar in the Arithmetic Geometry series:
Ambrus Pal (Imperial College)
A homotopy exact sequence for overconvergent isocrystals
Further information: I will explain how to prove the exactness of the homotopy sequence of overconvergent p-adic fundamental groups for a smooth and projective morphism in characteristic p. We do so by first proving a corresponding result for rigid analytic varieties in characteristic 0, following dos Santos in the algebraic case. In characteristic p we proceed by a series of reductions to the case of a liftable family of curves, where we can apply the rigid analytic result. Joint work with Chris Lazda.
On Friday, June 9, at 14:00 in Dennis Sciama Lecture Theatre, a seminar in the Theoretical Physics Colloquia series:
Fernando Alday (Mathematical Institute, Oxford)
The Analytic Conformal Bootstrap
On Friday, June 9, at 16:00 in L1, a seminar in the Math Colloquium series:
Caroline Series (University of Warwick)
The cover of the December AMS Notices
Further information: The cover of the December 2016 AMS Notices shows an eye-like region picked out by blue and red dots and surrounded by green rays. The picture, drawn by Yasushi Yamashita, illustrates Gaven Martin’s search for the smallest volume 3-dimensional hyperbolic orbifold. It represents a family of two generator groups of isometries of hyperbolic 3-space which was recently studied, for quite different reasons, by myself, Yamashita and Ser Peow Tan. After explaining the coloured dots and their role in Martin’s search, we concentrate on the green rays. These are Keen-Series pleating rays which are used to locate spaces of discrete groups. The theory also suggests why groups represented by the red dots on the rays in the inner part of the eye display some interesting geometry.
On Monday, June 12, at 14:00 in Dennis Sciama Lecture Theatre, a seminar in the Astrophysics Colloquia series:
Dr. John Magorrian (University of Oxford)
Gaia and the Milky Way
On Monday, June 12, at 14:15 in L4, a seminar in the Geometry and Analysis series:
Bill Goldman (University of Maryland)
TBA
On Monday, June 12, at 23:15 in L3, a seminar in the String Theory series:
Shehryar Sikander (Abdus Salam ICTP)
TBA
On Friday, June 16, at 11:00 in C3, a seminar in the Arithmetic Geometry series:
Amilcar Pacheco (Oxford and Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro)
Rational points on curves over function fields (with F. Pazuki)
Further information: TBA
On Friday, October 20, at 16:00 , a seminar in the Math Colloquium series:
Robert Calderbank (Duke University)
Title tbc
Further information: Tbc