Mathematical Physics

In 2003 Witten introduced twistor string theory as a novel description of the scattering matrix of the maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions. In these lectures I will give an introduction to the developments that have led to new formulations, also based on Riemann surfaces, of a large variety of theories, with and without supersymmetry, in arbitrary space-time dimensions.

Supersymmetric gauge theory computes a very special class of (generalized) polylogarithm functions known as scattering amplitudes that have remarkable mathematical properties. In particular, there is a rich connection between these amplitudes and the G(4,n) Grassmannian cluster algebra. To explain this connection I will review some basic facts about the Hopf algebra of polylogarithms and cluster Poisson varieties. I will then define cluster polylogarithm functions which roughly speaking are polylogarithm functions whose arguments are cluster X-coordinates of some cluster algebra A. I will describe an additional property of certain scattering amplitudes, that they are "local" in the algebra A, and describe the classification of cluster polylogarithm functions with this property. The computation of new amplitudes can be greatly aided by knowledge of the class of functions in terms of which they may be expressed, as I will illustrate via an example.

Buildings are higher dimensional analogues of trees. The goal of these lectures is to explain how the theory of harmonic maps to buildings affords a new perspective on certain aspects of the WKB analysis of differential equations that depend on a small parameter. We will also touch upon some motivation for developing this perspective, which derives from questions about compactifications of higher Teichmüller spaces, stability in Fukaya categories, and the work of Gaiotto, Moore and Neitzke on spectral networks and wall-crossing phenomena. These talks are based on joint work with Ludmil Katzarkov, Alexander Noll and Carlos Simpson. A central role in our discussion will be played by the notion of a versal pre-building associated with a given spectral cover of a Riemann surface. This notion generalizes to higher rank the leaf space of the foliation defined by a quadratic differential. We will see that spectral networks are closely related to the singular loci of versal buildings, and that distances in these buildings encode information about the asymptotic behavior at infinity of the Riemann-Hilbert correspondence.

Exact WKB analysis, developed by Voros et.al., is an effective method for the global study of differential equations (containing a large parameter) defined on a complex domain. In the first and second lecture I'll give an introduction to exact WKB analysis, and recall some basic facts about WKB solutions, Borel resummation, Stokes graphs etc. On the other hand, cluster algebras are a particular class of commutative subalgebras of the field of rational functions with distinguished generators. I'll explain about a hidden cluster algebraic structure in exact WKB analysis in the third lecture. This is a joint work with Tomoki Nakanishi (Nagoya).

In 2003 Witten introduced twistor string theory as a novel description of the scattering matrix of the maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions. In these lectures I will give an introduction to the developments that have led to new formulations, also based on Riemann surfaces, of a large variety of theories, with and without supersymmetry, in arbitrary space-time dimensions.

I will give a brief overview of Topological Recursion and present the general setting and our contribution to this field via geometry and topology techniques. In particular, I will discuss the toplogical recursion applied to the family of spectral curves of Hitchen modulo spaces of Higgs bundles over a smooth base curve C. We study meromorphic Higgs fields of rank two and we realized their spectral curves as divisors in the compactifed cotangent bundle. Topological recursion gives a way to quantize the spectral curve of a Higgs bundle. I will present as typical examples of our theory, some well-known constructions as the recursion of Witten-Kontsevich intersection numbers and the recursion of Catalan numbers, that count the number of cellular graphs on a Riemann Surfaces. In particular, we present a model for the twisted version of the Topological Recursion via Cohomological Field Theory for Mg;n(BG). We prove tat edge contraction axioms of cellular graphs leads to a TQFT.

Buildings are higher dimensional analogues of trees. The goal of these lectures is to explain how the theory of harmonic maps to buildings affords a new perspective on certain aspects of the WKB analysis of differential equations that depend on a small parameter. We will also touch upon some motivation for developing this perspective, which derives from questions about compactifications of higher Teichmüller spaces, stability in Fukaya categories, and the work of Gaiotto, Moore and Neitzke on spectral networks and wall-crossing phenomena. These talks are based on joint work with Ludmil Katzarkov, Alexander Noll and Carlos Simpson. A central role in our discussion will be played by the notion of a versal pre-building associated with a given spectral cover of a Riemann surface. This notion generalizes to higher rank the leaf space of the foliation defined by a quadratic differential. We will see that spectral networks are closely related to the singular loci of versal buildings, and that distances in these buildings encode information about the asymptotic behavior at infinity of the Riemann-Hilbert correspondence.

Exact WKB analysis, developed by Voros et.al., is an effective method for the global study of differential equations (containing a large parameter) defined on a complex domain. In the first and second lecture I'll give an introduction to exact WKB analysis, and recall some basic facts about WKB solutions, Borel resummation, Stokes graphs etc. On the other hand, cluster algebras are a particular class of commutative subalgebras of the field of rational functions with distinguished generators. I'll explain about a hidden cluster algebraic structure in exact WKB analysis in the third lecture. This is a joint work with Tomoki Nakanishi (Nagoya).

In 2003 Witten introduced twistor string theory as a novel description of the scattering matrix of the maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory in four dimensions. In these lectures I will give an introduction to the developments that have led to new formulations, also based on Riemann surfaces, of a large variety of theories, with and without supersymmetry, in arbitrary space-time dimensions.

Perhaps the first use of the mathematical theory of heat to develop another theory was Thomson’s use of Fourier’s equations to formulate equations for electrostatics in the 1840s. After extracting a lesson from this historical case, I will fast forward more than a century to examine the relationship between classical statistical mechanics and QFT that is induced by analytic continuation. While there is no doubt that this mathematical relationship has been heuristically useful in guiding developments in both statistical mechanics and QFT, this is a case in which the physical interpretation of the mathematics does not carry over from one theory to the other.