Mathematical Physics

Principal bundles and their moduli have been important in various aspects of physics and geometry for many decades. It is perhaps not so well-known that a substantial portion of the original motivation for studying them came from number theory, namely the study of Diophantine equations. I will describe a bit of this history and some recent developments.

I discuss a geometric interpretation of the twisted indexes of 3d (softly broken) $\cN=4$ gauge theories on $S^1 \times \Sigma$ where $\Sigma$ is a closed genus $g$ Riemann surface, mainly focussing on quivers with unitary gauge groups. The path integral localises to a moduli space of solutions to generalised vortex equations on $\Sigma$, which can be understood algebraically as quasi-maps to the Higgs branch. I demonstrate that the twisted indexes computed in previous work reproduce the virtual Euler characteristic of the moduli spaces of twisted quasi-maps. I investigate 3d $\cN=4$ mirror symmetry in this context, which implies an equality of enumerative invariants associated to mirror pairs of Higgs branches under the exchange of equivariant and degree counting parameters. I will conclude with some remarks about how holomorphic Morse theory can be used to access the spaces of supersymmetric ground states in limits where $\cN=4$ supersymmetry is fully restored. These spaces of ground states may be related to the spaces of conformal blocks for the VOAs introduced by Costello and Gaiotto.