PIRSA:23020056

The Tenfold Way

APA

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

MLA

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

BibTex

          @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 System

Collection
Talk Type Scientific Series
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