PIRSA:23020056

The Tenfold Way

Baez, J. (2023). The Tenfold Way. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/23020056

Baez, John. The Tenfold Way. Perimeter Institute, Feb. 15, 2023, https://pirsa.org/23020056 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:23020056,
            doi = {10.48660/23020056},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/23020056},
            author = {Baez, John},
            keywords = {Other},
            language = {en},
            title = {The Tenfold Way},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2023},
            month = {feb},
            note = {PIRSA:23020056 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

John Baez

University of California, Riverside

Talk number
PIRSA:23020056
Collection
Talk Type
Subject
Abstract

The importance of the tenfold way in physics was only recognized in this century. Simply put, it implies that there are ten fundamentally different kinds of matter. But it goes back to 1964, when the topologist C. T. C. Wall classified the associative real super division algebras and found ten of them. The three 'purely even' examples were already familiar: the real numbers, complex numbers and quaternions. The rest become important when we classify representations of groups on Z/2-graded Hilbert spaces. We explain this classification, its connection to Clifford algebras, and some of its implications.

Zoom Link: https://pitp.zoom.us/j/96451287888?pwd=dlp2eVhKVTU0L2hqN2UxMy95V21SQT09