ICMS

Apr 20, 2009 - Apr 22, 2009

Informatics Forum, University of Edinburgh

Organisers

Name	Institution
Ellwood, David	Clay Mathematics Institute
Ranicki, Andrew	University of Edinburgh

Scientific Committee
Professor Simon Donaldson, FRS (Imperial College, London)
Professor Nigel Hitchin, FRS (Oxford)
Professor Frances Kirwan, FRS (Oxford)
Professor Graeme Segal, FRS (Oxford)

Sir Michael Atiyah

(Image copyright of the Artist, Juliet Wood)

The workshop is planned to coincide with the 80th birthday on 22nd April 2009 of Sir Michael Atiyah PRS, PRSE, Fields and Abel Medallist, and undoubtedly the most influential British mathematician of the last 50 years.

Perhaps the most exciting interaction between physics and mathematics at the moment is in Quantum Field Theory and String Theory. The proposed workshop is intended to bring the world leaders in this interaction to ICMS; to exchange ideas, to give lectures to active practitioners in the fields and to announce their latest results.

Invited Speakers
Tom Bridgeland (Sheffield)
Robbert Dijkgraaf (Amsterdam)
Simon Donaldson (Imperial College, London)
Peter Higgs (Edinburgh)
Nigel Hitchin (Oxford)
Mike Hopkins (Harvard)
Frances Kirwan (Oxford)
Dusa McDuff (Stony Brook/Barnard)
David Saxon (Glasgow)
Graeme Segal (Oxford)
Paul Seidel (MIT)
Cumrun Vafa (Harvard)
Edward Witten (IAS, Princeton and CERN)

Honorary Speakers

Fritz Hirzebruch (Bonn)
Isadore Singer (MIT)

Supporting Institutions
EPSRC
LMS
EMS
Clay Mathematics Institute
Trinity College, Cambridge
NSF (for information about NSF funding, please click here)

Poster
Download a pdf of the conference poster for your noticeboard

Links
Biography, St.Andrews' MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
Biographical material from Barcelona (PDF of 67.20 KB)
Abel Prize 2004

Arrangements

Andrew Ranicki's Workshop website
Andrew's website especially for the workshop has photos and downloads of interest for those who attended the workshop and the dinner. 

Venue
The workshop was held in the new Informatics Forum at the University of Edinburgh.

Public Event
The Higgs boson: what, why, how?
Venue: Royal Society of Edinburgh, George Street, Edinburgh
Date and time: 21 April at 18.00

As part of this workshop there will be a a panel discussion organised jointly by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and ICMS. Sir Michael Atiyah will chair the meeting. Peter Higgs (Edinburgh) will speak on the origins of the concept of the eponymous boson. Edward Witten (IAS and CERN) will speak about the modern theory of the boson, and what is being tested at CERN. Professor Saxon (Glasgow) will outline the experimental challenges. There will be an opportunity for the audience to ask questions.

Tickets will be available for most workshop participants. Additional tickets will be available through the RSE.

Post-graduate and Post-doc Event
Atiyah 80 Plus
Venue: 14 India Street, Edinburgh
Date and time: 23 April 9.30-17.30

To follow up on the workshop, the PG students of the University of Edinburgh are organizing a one-day event. Please follow the link above for more information and contact details.

"Science, Politics and Drama"
On April 23/24 the Royal Society of Edinburgh will be organizing a series of events entitled "Science, Politics and Drama" reflecting some of Sir Michael Atiyah's non-mathematical interests.

Registration
A registration fee is payable in advance and is a prerequisite for final acceptance.

Maps
A map of Pollock Halls, including the location of South Hall where the workshop dinner is held can be found here

Download a map of the location of the Informatics Forum here

Travel
Information about travel to the UK and Edinburgh is available here.

Meals and Refreshments

Included meals: There will be breaks for refreshments between the talks, as detailed in the programme. A sandwich buffet lunch will be provided during the lunch breaks. The Monday evening wine reception and Wednesday night workshop dinner are also included.

Accommodation
You are asked to reserve your own accommodation. (Accommodation will be reserved for invited speakers).

Programme

Monday 20 April

08.30 - 09.45	Registration and coffee
09.45 - 10.00	Sir Timothy O'Shea (Principal of University of Edinburgh) Welcome
10.00 - 11.00	Edward Witten (Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton and CERN) Nahm's equations, the Bogomolny equation, and an application to Geometric Langlands Download PDF of talk
11.00 - 11.30	Coffee
11.30 - 12.30	Nigel Hitchin (University of Oxford) Hyperbolic monopoles and rational normal curves Download PDF (5 MB)
12.30 - 14.30	Lunch
14.30 - 15.30	Tom Bridgeland (University of Sheffield) Counting invariants and wall-crossing Download PDF of talk
15.30 - 16.00	Coffee
16.00 - 17.00	Frances Kirwan (University of Oxford) Geometric invariant theory for non-reductive group actions and applications via jet differentials Download PDF of talk
17.00 - 19.00	Reception

 

Tuesday 21 April

10.00 - 11.00	Mike Hopkins (Harvard University) Applications of algebra to a problem in topology Download talk (44 MB)
11.00 - 11.30	Coffee
11.30 - 12.30	Graeme Segal (University of Oxford) Noncommutative geometry and quantum field theory
12.30 - 14.30	Lunch
14.30 - 15.30	Dusa McDuff (Stony Brook/Barnard) Symplectic embeddings of $4$-dimensional ellipsoids Download PDF of talk
15.30 - 16.00	Coffee
16.00 - 17.00	Paul Seidel (MIT) Homological mirror symmetry for the genus two surface
18.00 - 19.30	Higgs Boson panel discussion, Royal Society of Edinburgh

 

Wednesday 22 April

10.00 - 11.00	Cumrun Vafa (Harvard University) Strings and the geometry of particle physics Download PDF of talk
11.00 - 11.30	Coffee
11.30 - 12.30	Simon Donaldson (Imperial College London) Kahler-Einstein metrics and geometric quantisation
12.30 - 14.30	Lunch
14.30 - 15.30	Robert Dijkgraaf(Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) Topological strings and quantum curves
15.30 - 16.00	Coffee
16.00 - 17.00	Fritz Hirzebruch (Max Planck Institute for Mathematics, Bonn) Reminiscences of the Fifties
19.30 - Late	Dinner, South Hall

 

More PDFs of talks will be made available here when they are received.

 

Presentations:

Presentation Details
Bridgeland, Tom
Counting invariants and wall-crossing
View Abstract Hide Abstract
This talk will be about how invariants counting coherent sheaves on Calabi-Yau threefolds transform under certain natural operations, for example birational maps. After describing a general class of such operations I will focus on two examples familiar to both algebraic geometers and string-theorists: the threefold flop and local P^2
Dijkgraaf, Robbert
Topological strings and quantum curves
View Abstract Hide Abstract
I will review how topological string theory connects enumerative geometry, integrable systems, random matrices, and quantization, and indicate some of the recent developments in this field.
Donaldson, Simon
Kahler-Einstein metrics and Geometric Quantisation
View Abstract Hide Abstract
We discuss the problem of constructing constant scalar curvature and Kahler-Einstein metrics on algebraic varieties, emphasising the interplay with the asymptotic analysis of sections of high powers of a holomorphic line, and connections with Geometric Quantisation.
Hirzebruch, Friedrich
Reminiscences of the Fifties
Hitchin, Nigel
Hyperbolic monopoles and rational normal curves
Hopkins, Mike
Applications of algebra to a problem in topology
Kirwan, Frances
Geometric invariant theory for non-reductive group actions and applications via jet differentials
View Abstract Hide Abstract
Mumford's geometric invariant theory (GIT) provides a method for constructing (projective completions of) quotient varieties for linear actions of reductive groups on projective varieties. This talk will describe ways to extend some of the main ideas of GIT to actions of linear algebraic groups which are not necessarily reductive, and an application (joint work with G Berczi) to the Green-Griffiths conjecture on curves in projective hypersurfaces, using Demailly's theory of jet differentials.
McDuff, Dusa
Symplectic embeddings of $4$-dimensional ellipsoids
View Abstract Hide Abstract
Gromov's Nonsqueezing Theorem shows that symplectic embedding questions lie at the heart of symplectic geometry. This talk will discuss some recent developments concerning the question of when a $4$-dimensional ellipsoid can be symplectically embedded in a ball. This problem turns out to have unexpected relations to the properties of continued fractions and exceptional curves in blow ups of the complex projective plane.
Segal, Graeme
Noncommutative geometry and quantum field theory
Seidel, Paul
Homological mirror symmetry for the genus two surface
View Abstract Hide Abstract
Kontsevich's homological mirror symmetry conjecture predicts a deep correspondence between algebraic geometry and symplectic geometry. In the lowest interesting dimension, our knowledge of how this works is now complete, at least in principle. I will start with motivation and with the simplest examples, and then expand the discussion to include more recent developments.
Vafa, Cumrun
Strings and the geometry of particle physics
View Abstract Hide Abstract
Dualities discovered in the context of string theory have taught us how to geometrically construct quantum field theories. I review some aspects of this connection and discuss some recent applications of these ideas for particle phenomenology.
Witten, Edward
Nahm's equations, the Bogomolny equation, and an application to Geometric Langlands
View Abstract Hide Abstract
I will explain how several different strands of mathematical physics can fit together to get a new perspective on the role of the principal SL_2 subgroup of a Lie group in the geometric Langlands correspondence.

Participants

Name	Institution
Abdel Gadir, Tarig	University of Glasgow
Abel, Mart	University of Tartu
Abouzaid, Mohammed	Clay Mathematics Institute / MIT
Adams-Florou, Spiros	University of Edinburgh
Altalli, Rajaa	Northeastern University
Alvarez-Consul, Luis	ICMAT Madrid
Amazeen, Grétar	University of Edinburgh
Atiyah, Sir Michael	University of Edinburgh
Baird, Tom	University of Oxford
Baker, Michael	University of Oxford
Benavides Navarro, Jhon Jairo	University of Florence
Bielawski, Roger	University of Leeds
Borat, Ayse	University of Aberdeen
Bourguignon, Jean-Pierre	CNRS-IHÉS
Braden, Harry	University of Edinburgh
Brandon, Lynn	Springer
Bridgeland, Tom	University of Sheffield
Brown, Nigel	University of Edinburgh
Bruening, Jochen	Humboldt University of Berlin
Byrne, Catriona	Springer
Carqueville, Nils	King's College London
Collins, Julia	University of Edinburgh
Constantine, David	University of Michigan
Culetu, Hristu	Ovidius University
D'Avanzo, Antonella	University of Edinburgh
Dancer, Andrew	University of Oxford
Davison, Alexander	University of the Witwatersrand
de Medeiros, Paul	University of Edinburgh
Del Debbio, Luigi	Universty of Edinburgh
Dhand, Vivek	Michigan State University
Dijkgraaf, Robbert	University of Amsterdam
Docherty, Pamela	University of Edinburgh
Dodd, James	Anthem Corporate Finance
Donaldson, Simon	Imperial College London
Donovan, Will	Imperial College London
Dupont, Johan	Aarhus University
Evans, David	Cardiff University
Evans, Jonathan	University of Cambridge
Feigin, Misha	University of Glasgow
Ferapontov, Evgeny	Loughborough University
Ferreira, Ana	University of Oxford
Figueroa-O'Farrill, José	University of Edinburgh
Fine, Joel	Université Libre de Bruxelles
Fourman, Michael	University of Edinburgh
Franco, Emilio	CSIC (Spain)
Furness, Peter	Peter Furness Limited
Gabella, Maxime	University of Oxford
Galatius, Soren	Stanford University
Garcia Pulido, Ana Lucia	University of Warwick
Garcia-Fernandez, Mario	ICMAT, CSIC
Garcia-Prada, Oscar	CSIC-Madrid
Gasparim, Elizabeth	University of Edinburgh
Gate, Martin	MBDA
George, Jacob	University of Manchester
Giansiracusa, Jeffrey	University of Oxford
Goddard, Peter	Institute for Advanced Study
Gordon, Iain	University of Edinburgh
Gothen, Peter	University of Porto
Grant, Mark	University of Edinburgh
Gray, Jeremy	Open University
Greuel, Gert-Martin	Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach
Gualtieri, Marco	University of Toronto
Hambleton, Ian	McMaster University
Haskins, Mark	Imperial College London
Haydys, Andriy	University of Bielefeld
Heinze, Joachim	Springer
Hepworth, Richard	University of Sheffield
Hezlet, Susan	London Mathematical Society
Higgs, Peter	University of Edinburgh
Hill, Michael	University of Virginia
Hirzebruch, Friedrich	Max Planck Institute for Mathematics
Hitchin, Nigel	University of Oxford
Holstein, Julian	University of Cambridge
Hopkins, Mike	Harvard University
Husain, Hafiz	University of Edinburgh
Husemoeller, Dale	Max Plank Institute for Mathematics
James, Berian	University of Edinburgh
Ji, Lizhen	University of Michigan
Joachim, Michael	Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität
Johnston, Des	Heriot-Watt University
Kahle, Alexander	Georg-August University Goettingen
Kakiichi, Koki	University of Edinburgh
Kang, Hyosang	University of Michigan
Karigiannis, Spiro	University of Waterloo
Kennedy, Anthony	University of Edinburgh
Kirwan, Frances	University of Oxford
Knops, Robin	Heriot-Watt University
Köppe, Thomas	University of Edinburgh
Lee, Hwasung	University of Oxford
Lenagan, Tom	University of Edinburgh
Lenells, Jonatan	University of Cambridge
Levikov, Filipp	University of Aberdeen
Liu, Haitao	University of New Brunswick
Logares, Marina	Universidade do Porto
Lord Mackay,
Lu, Rongmin	University of Adelaide
Luke, Glenys	University of Oxford
Ma'u, Sikimeti	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Macintyre, Angus	University of London
Maciocia, Antony	University of Edinburgh
Manolescu, Ciprian	UCLA / University of Cambridge
Manton, Nicholas	University of Cambridge
Martens, Johan	University of Toronto
Martin, Alexandre	University of Edinburgh
Mason, Lionel	University of Oxford
McDuff, Dusa	Barnard College
McGerty, Kevin	Imperial College London
McKay, Benjamin	University College Cork
McTague, Carl	University of Cambridge
Meachan, Ciaran	University of Edinburgh
Mendez-Escobar, Elena	University of Edinburgh
Morava, Jack	The John Hopkins University
Murray, Michael	University of Adelaide
Nappi, Chiara	Princeton University
Newstead, Ann	University of Liverpool
Newstead, Peter	University of Liverpool
Owens, Brendan	University of Glasgow
Panov, Dmitri	Imperial College London
Picken, Roger	Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST), Lisbon
Plansangkate, Prim	University of Cambridge
Pokorny, Florian	University of Edinburgh
Powell, Mark	University of Edinburgh
Ranicki, Andrew	University of Edinburgh
Raynor, Sophie	University of Leiden
Rees, Elmer	University of Bristol
Reintjes, Moritz	University of California Davis
Reynolds, Paul	University of Edinburgh
Ritter, Patricia	University of Edinburgh
Roe, John	Penn State University
Ross, Julius	University of Cambridge
Rubio, Roberto	Institute for the Mathematical Sciences
Saxon, David	University of Glasgow
Schaposnik, Laura	University of Oxford
Scheithauer, Nils	University of Darmstadt
Schlueter, Dirk	University of Oxford
Segal, Ed	Imperial College London
Segal, Graeme	University of Oxford
Seidel, Paul	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sepe, Daniele	University of Edinburgh
Serman, Olivier	Laboratoire Paul Painlevé
Shannon, Alexander	University of Cambridge
Siegel, Paul	Pennsylvania State University
Sinclair, Allan	University of Edinburgh
Singer, Isadore	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Singer, Michael	University of Edinburgh
Smith, Graham	CRM, Barcelona
Smith, Ivan	University of Cambridge
Spencer, Christopher	University of Edinburgh
Stevenson, Daniel	University of Glasgow
Sutherland, Tom	University of Sheffield
Szablikowski, Blazej	University of Glasgow
Szabo, Richard	Heriot-Watt University
Teh, Jyh-Haur	National Tsing Hua University of Taiwan
Thomas, Richard	Imperial College London
Toland, John	University of Bath
Unwin, James	University of Oxford
Uuye, Otgonbayar	University of Copenhagen
Vafa, Cumrun	Harvard University
Valentino, Alessandro	Georg-August University Goettingen
Vasilyev, Vladimir	Bryansk State University
Veselov, Alexander	University of Loughborough
Walker, Alan	University of Edinburgh
Wallace, David	Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences
Wendland, Katrin	Universität Augsburg
Willerton, Simon	University of Sheffield
Wilson, Pelham	University of Cambridge
Witten, Edward	Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, CERN
Woit, Peter	Columbia University
Xambo, Sebastia	Polytechnic University of Catalonia