North British Mathematical Physics Seminar 30
The thirtieth meeting of the North British Mathematical Physics Seminar took place on Friday 10th June 2011
at the University of York. These people participated.
We have a new location:
the King's Manor. This is in the centre of the city,
5 minutes' walk from the railway station,
and, we hope, will make coming to York NBMPS by rail much more convenient.
To get there, turn left out of the station, under the wall, left over the bridge over the river,
then left after 100m at the crossroads (see map). The King's Manor is in Exhibition Square, to the
left of the city art gallery.
Refreshments and lunch will be in the refectory (paying individually): go through the porters' lodge and up the stone
staircase towards the end of the first court on the left. Talks will be in the 1960s building (which hosts the Department of Archaeology) beyond the second court: go up either
external staircase and it's K/159, at the right-hand end of the first-floor corridor.
Programme
1130-1230
Veronika Hubeny
(Durham)
This talk is cast within the context of AdS/CFT, in particular
the relation between the radiation produced by accelerating quark at the
boundary, and the motion of a fundamental string in the bulk AdS spacetime.
We propose a mechanism whereby a string source deep in bulk of AdS nevertheless
induces highly localized energy density in the boundary CFT, which simultaneously
provides a simple technique for computing the radiation.
1345-1445
Richard Szabo
(Heriot-Watt)
We describe the statistical mechanics of a melting crystal in three dimensions,
and its relationships with diverse topics in mathematical physics. On the
mathematics side, the model is connected to the combinatorics of plane
partitions and the enumeration of Donaldson-Thomas invariants in algebraic
geometry. On the physics side, it is related to certain integrable hierarchies,
matrix models, Chern-Simons gauge theory, and a toy model of quantum gravity
in six dimensions. Its partition function can also be computed by enumerating
the contributions from noncommutative instantons to a six-dimensional
topological gauge theory; this yields an interpretation of the melting crystal
model as a discretization of six-dimensional spacetime at the Planck scale.
We also describe analogous relations between a melting crystal model in two
dimensions and N=4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions.
1445-1515
Leon Loveridge
(York)
The Wigner-Araki-Yanase (WAY) theorem demonstrates that perfectly
accurate and repeatable measurements cannot be realised for an observable
that does not commute with an additive conserved quantity of the system
and apparatus. However, the proof only incorporates a limited class of
observables and conserved quantities.
I shall review this work, provide some small extensions and discuss
new work on the important case of position measurements subject to
momentum conservation, which is not covered by the original theorem.
These results can be used to answer an old question posed by Stein and Shimony.
1600-1700
John Barrett
(Nottingham)
A proposal that the bosonic action of gravity and the standard model
is induced from the fermionic action is investigated. It is suggested that
this might occur naturally in state sum models. arXiv:1101.6078
1700-1730
Prince Koree Osei
(University of Ghana / Heriot-Watt)
In the combinatorial quantistation approach to 3d gravity one
needs to find a classical r-matrix which is compatible with the classical
theory, in a suitable sense. In some cases, several classical r-matrix are
compatible with a given classical action, leading to an apparent ambiguity
in the quantisation. In this talk I will describe and classify these ambiguities,
and relate them to the concept of semiduality of Hopf algebras.
Practical Information
This is the map
to get you from the railway station to King's Manor (the
university-provided one
doesn't show the station).
If you come by car I'm afraid you'll need to take your chances in the city centre car parks.
Limited funds are available to help with travel expenses of those
with no other source of funding, especially postgraduate students and
postdocs. Please book early to take advantage of the cheaper
advance-purchase train fares. For how to claim please see
the main NBMPS page.
If you wish to attend the meeting, or for further questions, please email the
local organisers:
Niall MacKay or
Eli Hawkins.