Langlands Meeting on Friday, October 15, 2004

Time: 3:10pm,
Place: 430 Birge Hall.

Modular Forms From Instanton Moduli Spaces - III

Abstract:

In [hep-th/9408074], Vafa and Witten constructed modular forms with Fourier series coefficients that are Euler numbers of (compactified) instanton moduli spaces of certain four-manifolds. I will review their construction and explain the physical intuition (electric/magnetic duality) behind it. It is widely believed that electric/magnetic duality and the existence of such modular forms have a natural explanation in six-dimensional physics. Witten conjectured that there exists a strongly-coupled six-dimensional quantum field theory that is responsible for these observations. The search for this mysterious field theory is an ongoing effort in string theory.

Speaker: Ori Ganor

Topics to be covered

More details on the construction of Vafa and Witten;
Six-dimensional self-dual field theories;

References

"A Strong Coupling Test of S-Duality," by C. Vafa and E. Witten, [hep-th/9408074]
"Global Aspects of Electric-Magnetic Duality," by E. Verlinde, [hep-th/9506011]
"Geometric Origin of Montonen-Olive Duality," by C. Vafa, [hep-th/9707131]

Please contact Ori Ganor at origa@socrates.berkeley.edu if you have any questions or comments about this website, or if you would like to volunteer to give a talk.