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Math-Physics Joint Seminar

Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - 3:30pm

Hiraku Nakajima

Kyoto

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL A6

Cross listed as departmental colloquium. There will be a second MP talk on Thursday 4/13.

Given a pair of a compact Lie group and its quaternionic representation, physicists consider a gauge theory in dimension 3, and associate its Coulomb branch, which is a noncompact hyperKaehler manifold possibly with singularities. Recently I propose its mathematical definition, partly with Braverman and Finkelberg, as a holomorphic symplectic variety. This definition gives a new class of symplectic varieties, which seems interesting in its own mathematically. In this talk, I will explain my motivation of the definition, based on a hypothetical topological quantum field theory associated with the gauge theory.