Thursday, 2 April 1998, 4:00 pm
Mathematics Bldg., lecture hall 2
Prof. Ruth Lawrence (University of Michigan)
Divergent series, Feynman integrals and knot theory
Abstract:
Despite what one might think at first sight, these three topics
have much in common. Both the first and last were first seriously studied
in the last century in the context of applications to physics, whie
Feynman integrals are at once an important tool arising in physics and have
been used to "prove" many deep results in mathematics while not currently
possessing a rigorous definition.
In this talk, we will demonstrate some of the connections which
can be seen between the three topics by investigating the
Witten-Reshetikhin-Turaev invariants of knots and 3-manifolds, and
will touch on some recent work which demonstrates that there is still
much structure in this field yet to be uncovered.
Coffee, Cookies at the faculty lounge at 3:30.
Come to the "after colloquium coffee chat" in Beit-Belgia.
