In spring and early summer 2004, the Erwin Schrödinger Institute in Vienna will host an international programme on the microscopic description of strings and branes in curved backgrounds and various related topics, including e.g. non-commutative quantum field theories. Activities will run from March until July, peaked around two workshops in April and June:
The specific topics of the workshop will of course be determined by the participants, but are likely to involve classification of branes by K-theory and derived categories, homological mirror symmetry, structural issues of (rational) boundary CFT, relations to non-commutative geometry.
With the same caveat as above, topics should involve strings theory in AdS spaces, on supergroups/cosets and in time-dependent singular backgrounds, open and closed string tachyon condensation, non-rational conformal field theory, logarithmic conformal field theory, super-current algebras. We hope that a mixture of participants from rather different areas can provide new impulses for the study of closely related recent issues in string theory, abstract conformal field theory and possibly mathematical condensed matter theory.
The following scientists have already mentioned dates when they intend to participate in the programme; some of these are, however, tentative at the moment:
| P. Aschieri | 27/4 - 11/5 |
| C. Bachas | 2 weeks in late April, early May |
| M. Berkooz | 07/6 - 18/6 |
| N. Berkovits | 07/6 - 10/6 |
| D. Blakeley | 02/5 - 07/6 |
| P. Bouwknegt | 27/4 - 10/5 |
| A. Cappelli | 13/6 - 20/6 |
| A. Carey | 27/5 - 05/6 |
| B. Craps | 02/6 - 19/6 |
| G. D'Appollonio | 07/6 - 21/6 |
| H. Enger | 28/4 - 11/5 |
| P. Fendley | 13/6 - 22/6 |
| J. Figueroa-O'Farrill | 10/5 - 24/5 |
| A. Font | 12/5 - 21/5 |
| S. Fredenhagen | 04/5 - 27/5 |
| M. Gaberdiel | 11/6 - 17/6 |
| K. Graham | 06/6 - 22/6 |
| B. Jurco | 03/5 - 21/5 |
| A. Kapustin | 27/4 - 06/5 |
| A. Klemm | 10 days, 2nd workshop |
| N. Lambert | 31/5 - 18/6 |
| G. Landi | 03/5 - |
| W. Lerche | 27/4 - 05/5 |
| J. Madore | 16/5 - 06/6 |
| V. Mathai | 26/5 - 30/5 |
| N. McKay | 07/6 - 16/6 |
| A. Odzijewicz | 28/4 - 11/5 |
| J. Pawelczyk | 03/5 - 07/5 and 31/5 - 11/6 |
| A. Pakman | 01/5 - 23/6 |
| P. Pearce | 06/6 - 22/6 |
| T. Quella | 27/5 - 21/6 |
| S. Rey | 2 weeks, 2nd workshop |
| S. Ribault | 06/6 - 21/6 |
| D. Roggenkamp | 27/4 - 15/5 |
| I. Runkel | 04/5 - 11/5 and 07/6 - 14/6 |
| R. Schimmrigk | 05/5 - 15/5 |
| K.-G. Schlesinger | 01/5 - 30/6 |
| P. Schupp | 15/5 - 28/5 |
| A. Schwimmer | 25/5 - 01/6 |
| P. Sorba | 07/6 - 13/6 |
| H. Steinacker | 10/5 - 15/5 and 30/5 - 04/6 |
| R. Suszek | 06/6 - 20/6 |
| B. Szendroi | 02/5 - 09/5 |
| A. Szenes | about 1 week in early May |
| J. Teschner | 07/6 - 19/6 |
| S. Theisen | at least 17/5 - 31/5 |
| G. Watts | 07/6 - 18/6 |
| K. Wendland | 25/4 - 13/5 |
| J. Wess | 07/6 - 21/6 |
| P. West | 19/4 - 30/4 and 14/6 - 29/6 |
The following scientists are planning to attend the programme but cannot not give any dates yet:
A. Alekseev, R. Wulkenhaar
We intend to update the information on this page regularly, in particular to provide definitive dates, lists of participants and other relevant information on the workshops, and also to offer hints how to best savour the unique ambience and the rich cultural life of Vienna. Here are some sight-seeing suggestions. Please refer to the ESI homepage for general practical information and some useful links.
| The organisers | ||
|---|---|---|
| Harald Grosse | Andreas Recknagel | Volker Schomerus |
| harald.grosse@univie.ac.at | anderl@mth.kcl.ac.uk | vschomer@spht.saclay.cea.fr |
Workshop on mathematical and physical aspects of branes in Calabi-Yau spaces
Schedule
| Thu 29/4 | Fri 30/4 | Mon 03/5 | Tue 04/5 | Wed 05/5 | Thu 06/5 | Fri 07/5 | Mon 10/5 | Tue 11/5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11:00 | Wendland | Wendland | Kapustin | Kapustin | Szendroi | Szendroi | Bouwknegt | Runkel | Figueroa-O'Farrill |
| 14:30 | West | Wendland | Szendroi | Szenes | 15:00 Aschieri | ||||
| 16:00 | West | Kapustin | Kaste | Lerche | Kapustin | Schimmrigk | Fredenhagen | 16:30 Jurco |
Titles and Abstracts
Paolo Aschieri, Branislav Jurco: Gerbes and Branes I/II
The intention is to discuss differential geometry and gauge theory on nonabelian gerbes, abelian gerbes and D-branes, anomalies, nonabelian gerbes and M-theory 5-branes.
Peter Bouwknegt: T-duality for principal torus bundles
T-duality, in its simplest form, is the R to 1/R symmetry of String Theory compactified on a circle of radius R. It can be generalized to manifolds which admit circle actions (e.g. circle bundles) or, more generally, torus actions. In the case of nontrivial torus bundles, and in the background of H-flux, T-duality relates manifolds of different topology and in particular provides isomorphisms between the twisted cohomologies and twisted K-theories of these manifolds. In this talk we will discuss these developments as well as provide some examples.
Stefan Fredenhagen: D-brane charges in Coset models
In this talk, I want to consider D-brane charges in backgrounds described by supersymmetric coset models from two perspectives. On the one hand, we evaluate dynamical information to determine the group of conserved charges. On the other hand, we analyse the charge lattice of RR-couplings. The results are then compared to the corresponding equivariant twisted K-theory.
Anton Kapustin: Topological D-branes
I will discuss D-branes in topological sigma-models and their geometric description. I will start by reviewing topological sigma-models and general properties of topological field theories. Then I will discuss boundary conditions compatible with the topological twist in the cases of A and B-models and explain the mathematical interpretation of the corresponding categories of D-branes.
Peter Kaste: Generalised discrete torsion and mirror symmetry for G_2 manifolds
A generalisation of discrete torsion is introduced in which different discrete torsion phases are considered for the different fixed points or twist fields of a twisted sector. The constraints that arise from modular invariance are analysed carefully. As an application we show how all the different resolutions of the T^7/Z_2^3 orbifold of Joyce have an interpretation in terms of such generalised discrete torsion orbifolds. Furthermore, we show that these manifolds are pairwise identified under G_2 mirror symmetry. From a conformal field theory point of view, this mirror symmetry arises from an automorphism of the extended chiral algebra of the G_2 compactification.
Wolfgang Lerche: Boundary flows in topological minimal models
Ingo Runkel: An algebraic approach to conformal field theory
There is a close connection between (rational) conformal
field theory in two dimensions, topological field theory in three
dimensions and algebras in tensor categories.
Correlators of a 2dCFT can be understood as states of a
3dTFT, which are associated to the two-dimensional boundary
of a three-manifold. The 3dTFT in turn can be obtained
from an algebraic construction starting from a so-called
modular tensor category. A given 3dTFT can allow for the
construction of different 2dCFTs, and this amounts to the
choice of an algebra in the modular tensor category.
Properties of the algebra are then directly linked to properties
of the 2dCFT. For example, modules of the algebra correspond
to boundary conditions of the CFT.
Rolf Schimmrigk: Arithmetic geometry of bulk and boundary CFTs
One of the old questions in string theory is which structures of spacetime encode the essential information of the underlying conformal field theory. In this talk methods from arithmetic algebraic geometry are applied to this problem in the context of Calabi-Yau varieties and D-branes.
Balasz Szendroi: Recent mathematical advances in mirror symmetry
I will talk about (some subset of) the following topics: recap of Kontsevich's Homological Mirror Symmetry, Douglas-Bridgeland stability, Seidel's and other people's recent work on mirror symmetry for Fano and K3 surfaces, recent work on McKay correspondence.
Andras Szenes: The mirror residue conjectures of Batyrev and Materov
Batyrev and Materov formulated a set of conjectures which give a new compact localization formula for the Yukawa couplings of toric mirror Calabi-Yau hypersurfaces and complete intersections. I will describe a proof of the conjectures, which I found in joint work with Michele Vergne. The main novel tool used in the proof is a variant of "tropical geometry", a degeneration technique used in real algebraic geometry.
Katrin Wendland: On degeneration phenomena in geometry and conformal field theory
In certain degenerate limits, conformal field theories are known to allow geometric interpretations. Phenomena like mirror symmetry are therefore closely linked to degeneration phenomena, and a better understanding of both the geometric and conformal field theoretic aspects of such phenomena is desirable. We attempt to give an account on some recent progress along these lines.