Automorphic forms, mock modular forms and string theory: August 29 – September 30, 2016

Organized by: Terry Gannon, David Ginzburg, Axel Kleinschmidt, Stephen D. Miller, Daniel Persson, and Boris Pioline

The purpose of this interdisciplinary program is to investigate connections between string theory and the theory of automorphic forms, modular forms and mock modular forms. This is an emergent field with a lot of potential for interdisciplinary collaborations. Recent work has revealed, on the one hand, a profound significance of automorphic forms and automorphic representations for string scattering amplitudes and, on the other hand, an unexpected appearance of mock theta functions in connection with new moonshine phenomena as well as in the analysis of quantum black holes. The mathematics of automorphic forms can thus help to answer highly interesting non-linear problems in string theory and physics intuition has been instrumental in formulating some deep relations and properties of automorphic forms. The main objective of the program is to gather physicists and mathematicians working on automorphic forms, mock modular forms, superstring amplitudes, black holes and moonshine in an effort to foster cross-fertilisations and exchanges of ideas between these seemingly disparate fields.