String Theory Journal Club
2015/2016 | 2016/2017 | 2017/2018 | 2018/2019 | 2019/2020 | 2020/2021 | 2021/2022 | 2022/2023 | 2023/2024 | 2024/2025
2025-10-14 (Tuesday)
Yoon Seok Chae (UC Davis)
Knots, series invariant and supergroup Chern-Simons theory
Topological quantum field theory (TQFT) has been a fruitful source ofinteractions between physics and topology. A classical example is thethree dimensional Chern-Simons theory from the 1980's. It yieldstopological invariants of links and three manifolds. In case of thelatter invariant, it was shown more recently that the invariant admitsa decomposition into a series invariant, which is a partition functionof a 3-dimensional (supersymmetric) QFT. This series invariant waslater generalized to a series invariant of knots. This motivated anextension of the series invariant of 3-manifolds to Lie supergroups,whose underlying physical theory is the supergroup Chern-Simonstheory. This result was recently generalized to knots.In this talk, we review the original series invariants and introducethe recent generalization, and explore its properties and examples.https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/96227261664?pwd=6XSohvXIkXoEalbPcswHlPh1kd2UG8.1
2025-10-06 (Monday)
Michał P. Heller (Ghent University and Jagiellonian University)
Insights into the microscopics of holographic complexity
I will discuss what the correspondence between a ’t Hooft-like limit of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and gravity teaches us about the microscopic interpretation of holographic complexity. Based on 2412.17785 (PRL in print) and work in progress.