Title: “WHAT IS … F-theory?”
Speaker: David Morrison, UC Santa Barbara
Date: Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm
Place: Lecture Hall 102, Simons Center
[box, type=”download”]Watch the video.[/box]
Abstract: In the spirit of the “WHAT IS …” series of articles in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, I will give a description of F-theory from first priniciples. On the one hand, F-theory is a theory of quantum gravity which arose from string theory but which is not exactly part of string theory. (I will explain these things to non-physicists.) On the other hand, F-theory provides a fascinating application of the Weierstrass p-function and the theory of elliptic curves, including the height pairing and the Mordell-Weil and Tate-Shafarevich groups. (I will explain these things to non-mathematicians.)