2020-2021
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Fridays 4pm, PH-367 or PH-385
The aim of this seminar is to bring speakers from this area and outside to speak on topics related to Representation Theory (specially geometric and topological methods employed in Representation Theory). The speakers are expected to give their talks at a level suitable for graduate students. The seminar is organized by Shrawan Kumar.
2021 fall
| Date | Speaker | Affiliation | Mode | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 19 | Hang Huang | TAMU | Zoom | Tensor Ranks and Matrix Multiplication Complexity |
| Nov 12 | Xuqiang Qin | UNC | In-person | Minimal instantons on Fano threefolds and compactifications of their moduli spaces |
| Nov 5 2:30pm | David Nadler | UC Berkley | In-person | Betti Geometric Langlands |
| Oct 29 | Chiara Damiolini | UPenn | Zoom | Geometric properties of generalized sheaves of conformal blocks |
| Oct 15 | Iva Halacheva | Northeastern | Zoom | Categorical and geometric realizations of cactus group actions on crystals |
| Oct 8 | Olivia Dumitrescu | UNC | In-person | Interplay between ribbon graphs and CohFT |
| Oct 1 | Calvin McPhail-Snyder | Duke | In-person | Quantum invariants from unrestricted quantum groups |
| Hang Huang Abstract: Tensors are just multi-dimensional arrays. Notions of ranks and border rank abound in the literature. Tensor decompositions also have a lot of application in data analysis, physics, and other areas of science. I will try to give a colloquium-style talk surveying my recent two results about tensor ranks and their application to matrix multiplication complexity. The first result relates different notions of tensor ranks to polynomials of vanishing Hessian. The second one computes the border rank of 3 X 3 permanent. I will also briefly discuss the newest technique we used to achieve our results: border apolarity. |
| Xuqiang Qin Abstract: Instanton bundles were first introduced on P^3 as stable rank 2 bundles E with c1(E)=0 and H^1(E(-2))=0. Torsion free generalizations and properties of moduli spaces of instanton bundles have been widely studied. Faenzi and Kuznetsov generalized the notion of instanton bundles to other Fano threefolds. In this talk, we look at semistable sheaves of rank 2 with Chern classes c1 = 0, c2 = 2 and c3 = 0 on some Fano threefolds of Picard number 1 and index 2. We show that the moduli space of such sheaves provides a smooth compactification of the moduli space of minimal instanton bundles. |
| David Nadler Abstract: I’ll introduce Betti Geometric Langlands through some key objects, conjectures and results. Then I’ll discuss recent and ongoing work with Zhiwei Yun devoted to constructing some of its expected topological field theory structures. |
| Chiara Damiolini Abstract: In this talk I will discuss geometric properties of certain sheaves on the moduli space of stable n-pointed curves which arise from modules over vertex operator algebras. These sheaves can be seen as a generalization of the notion of conformal blocks attached to representations of Lie algebras. Keeping this in mind, I will focus on exploring which properties of the classical conformal blocks still hold in this more exotic context, and which new open questions arise in this setting. This is based on a joint work with A. Gibney and N. Tarasca and ongoing work with A. Gibney. |
| Iva Halacheva Abstract: One approach to studying the representation theory of Lie algebras and their associated quantum groups is through combinatorial shadows known as crystals. While the original representations carry an action of the braid group, their crystals carry an action of a closely related group known as the cactus group. I will describe how we can realize this combinatorial action both geometrically, as a monodromy action coming from a family of ‘’shift of argument’’ algebras, as well as categorically through the structure of certain equivalences on triangulated categories known as Rickard complexes. Parts of this talk are based on joint work with Joel Kamnitzer, Leonid Rybnikov, and Alex Weekes, as well as Tony Licata, Ivan Losev, and Oded Yacobi. |
| Olivia Dumitrescu Abstract: We will review an axiomatic formulation of a 2D TQFT whose formalism is based on the edge-contraction operations on graphs drawn on a Riemann surface (cellular graphs). We will describe a new result, that ribbon graphs provide both cohomological field theory and a visual explanation of Frobenius-Hopf duality. This is based on work in progress with Motohico Mulase. |
| Calvin McPhail-Snyder Abstract: Quantum groups are a central part of the construction of quantum invariants of knots, links, and 3-manifolds. Existing work focuses mainly on the case where the quantization parameter q is generic, or on the semisimplified theory at q a root of unity. In this talk, I will discuss how to construct invariants of knots (and links) using the non-semisimple part of unrestricted quantum sl_2 at a root of unity. These “holonomy invariants” turn out to be very geometric: they depend on the extra data of a map from π_1 of the knot complement to SL_2(C), which is essentially a choice of hyperbolic structure. |
2021 Spring
| Date | Speaker | Affiliation | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 26 | Alex Weeks | University of British Columbia | Coulomb branches symmetrizable types |
| March 19 | Tsao-Hsien Chen | University of Minnesota | Towards derived Satake equivalence for symmetric varieties |
| March 5 | Anne Dranowski | IAS | How to compute the fusion product of MV cycles in type A |
| Feb 19 | Charlotte Chan | MIT | Flag varieties and representations of p-adic groups |
| Jan 29 | Yau Wing Li | MIT | Endoscopy for affine Hecke categories |
| Alex Weeks Abstract: Braverman-Finkelberg-Nakajima have recently given a mathematical construction of the Coulomb branches for 3d N=4 theories. From a representation-theoretic perspective, one reason that their work is especially appealing is that affine Grassmannian slices of ADE types arise this way, associated to quiver gauge theories. By allowing general quivers, Coulomb branches also provide a candidate definition for affine Grassmannian slices in all symmetric Kac-Moody types. In this talk I will discuss joint work with Nakajima, where we generalize the BFN construction of the Coulomb branch to incorporate “symmetrizers”. In this way we recover affine Grassmannian slices in BCFG type, and a candidate definition for symmetrizable Kac-Moody types. |
| Tsao-Hsien Chen Abstract: In an ongoing project of D. Ben-Zvi, Y. Sakellaridis and A. Venkatesh, the authors propose a conjectural generalization of the derived Satake equivalence for complex reductive groups to spherical varieties. I will describe a program aimed at establishing their conjecture in the case of symmetric varieties (an important class of spherical varieties). A key ingredient is the relation between the Satake category for symmetric varieties and the geometric Langlands for real reductive groups. |
| Anne Dranowski In their recent paper on the MV basis and DH measures, Baumann, Kamnitzer and Knutson showed that Mirkovic and Vilonen’s geometric Satake basis of singular algebraic cycles yields a biperfect basis of the coordinate ring of a unipotent subgroup. Moreover, they showed that the structure constants of multiplication of basis vectors in this ring are given by intersection forms. We present joint work in progress generalizing an isomorphism of Mirkovic and Vybornov towards effectively computing these intersections when G=GL_m. Time permitting we discuss alternate methods in the literature as well as applications. |
| Charlotte Chan Flag varieties and representations of p-adic groups Abstract: Deligne–Lusztig varieties are subvarieties of flag varieties whose cohomology encodes the representations of reductive groups over finite fields. These give rise to so-called “depth-zero” supercuspidal representations of p-adic groups. In this talk, we discuss geometric constructions of positive depth supercuspidal representations and the implications of such realizations towards the Langlands program. This is partially based on joint work with Alexander Ivanov and joint work with Masao Oi. |
| Yau Wing Li Endoscopy for affine Hecke categories Abstract: Affine Hecke categories are categorifications of Iwahori-Hecke algebras, which are essential in the classification of irreducible representations of loop group LG with Iwahori-fixed vectors. The affine Hecke category has a monodromic counterpart, which contains sheaves with prescribed monodromy under the left and right actions of the maximal torus. We show that the neutral block of this monoidal category is equivalent to the neutral block of the affine Hecke category (with trivial torus monodromy) for the endoscopic group H. It is consistent with the Langlands functoriality conjecture. |
2020 Spring
| Date | Speaker | Affiliation | Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 21 | Dennis Tseng | Harvard | Equivariant degenerations of plane curve orbits |
| Feb 14 | Rekha Biswal | MPIM | Macdonald polynomials and level two Demazure modules for affine sl_{n+1} |
| Rekha Biswal Macdonald polynomials and level two Demazure modules for affine sl_{n+1} Abstract: An important result due to Sanderson and Ion says that characters of level one Demazure modules are specialized Macdonald polynomials. In this talk, I will introduce a new class of symmetric polynomialsindexed by a pair of dominant weights of sl_{n+1} which is expressed as linear combination of specialized symmetric Macdonald polynomials with coefficients defined recursively. These polynomials arose in my own work while investigating the characters of higher level Demazure modules. Using representation theory, we will see that these new family of polynomials interpolate between characters of level one and level two Demazure modules for affine sl_{n+1} and give rise to new results in the representation theory of current algebras as a corollary. This is based on joint work with Vyjayanthi Chari, Peri Shereen and Jeffrey Wand. |
| Dennis Tseng Equivariant degenerations of plane curve orbits Abstract: In a series of papers, Aluffi and Faber computed the degree of the GL3 orbit closure of an arbitrary plane curve. We attempt to generalize this to the equivariant setting by studying how these orbits degenerate, yielding a fairly complete picture in the case of plane quartics. As an enumerative consequence, we will see that a general genus 3 curve appears 510720 times as a 2-plane section of a general quartic threefold. We also hope to survey the relevant literature and will only assume the basics of intersection theory. This is joint work with M. Lee and A. Patel. |