Talks

Skew Howe duality is based on a very simple observation: the set of n by m matrices has commuting action of SL_n and SL_m.  We can use this observation to study morphisms of GL_m representations using GL_n.  This perspective has proven very useful in recent years for studying quantum knot invariants and their categorifications.  I will survey work in this direction from the last 10 years, including more recent developments concerning annular skew Howe duality and annular knot invariants.

In this talk, intended for a broader audience, I promise to use techniques only at the level of university calculus. While staying at this level, our goal will be to learn conceptual lessons for categorification of quantum group invariants of knots and 3-manifolds, also known as the Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev (or WRT) invariants. In particular, we will introduce new q-series invariants of 3-manifolds that have integer powers and integer coefficients and, if time permits, discuss their various constructions and properties. The talk is based on several papers with D. Pei and/or P. Putrov, C. Vafa, as well as ongoing work with C. Manolescu.

When a system interacts with an environment with which it is initially uncorrelated, its evolution is described by a completely positive map.  The common wisdom in the field of quantum information theory, however, is that when the system is initially correlated with the environment, the map describing its evolution may fail to be completely positive. This has motivated many researchers to try and characterize this putatively more general sort of dynamics, and even the textbook of Nielsen and Chuang suggests that "It is an interesting problem for further research to study quantum information processing beyond the quantum operations formalism."  This talk will demonstrate that this common wisdom is mistaken.  The error can be traced to the standard argument for how the evolution map ought to be defined in such circumstances.  One can show that anomolous dynamics would arise even in completely classical examples if one were to follow the prescription of the standard argument.  The framework of classical causal models specifies how dynamics ought to be defined in such circumstances, and

the quantum analogue of this framework provides the correct definition of the quantum evolution map, which is found to be always completely positive.

Joint work with David Schmid

Polyakov’s bootstrap programme aims at solving conformal field theories using 
unitarity and conformal symmetry. Its implementation in two dimensions has been 
highly successful and numerical studies, in particular of the 3-dimensional Ising 
model, have clearly demonstrated the potential for higher dimensional theories. 
Analytical results in higher dimensions, however, require significant insight 
into the conformal group and its representations. Surprisingly little is actually 
known about this important group theory challenge. I  will explain a remarkable 
and unexpected connection with a class of Schroedinger equations that was uncovered 
in recent joint work with M. Isachenkov. The study of the relevant quantum mechanics 
systems has created an entire branch of modern mathematics whose results can now be 
put to use in the conformal bootstrap program.