Rui Peixoto (UMass Math&Stat): Observables and symmetries
Please note this event occurred in the past.
December 09, 2024 1:15 pm - 2:30 pm ET
Colloquium Room LGRT 1681
Speaker: Rui Peixoto (UMass Math&Stat)
When studying a physical theory, one foundational question keeps both detector building engineers and puzzled theoreticians employed: “what can I measure with it?”. Tackling this question has been a fruitful endeavor: the observables often organize themselves into beautifully symmetric mathematical structures.
In this talk, I intend to offer a concise and understandable explanation of how factorization algebras serve as a natural framework for discussing the observables of a physical theory. I will conclude by presenting examples of how factorization algebras encode both well-known and less familiar algebraic structures (e.g. vertex algebras).