In this series of lectures directed towards a mainly mathematically oriented audience I try to motivate the use of operator algebra methods in quantum field theory. Therefore a title as ``why mathematicians are/should be interested in algebraic quantum field theory'' would be equally fitting. Besides a presentation of the framework and the main results of local quantum physics these notes may serve as a guide to some frontier research problems in mathematical physics with applications in particle and condensed matter physics for whose solution operator algebraic methods seem indispensable. The ultraviolet problems of the standard approach and the recent holographic aspects belong to this kind of problems.
These notes are for the author's lectures, "Integral Reduction and Applied Algebraic Geometry Techniques" in the School and Workshop on Amplitudes in Beijing 2016. I introduce the applications of algebraic geometry methods on multi-loop scattering amplitudes, for instance, integrand reduction, residue computation in unitarity analysis and Integration-by-parts reduction. Illustrative examples and exercises are included in these notes.
This lecture note surveys the gamma matrices in general dimensions with arbitrary signatures, the study of which is essential to understand the supersymmetry in the corresponding spacetime. The contents supplement the lecture presented by the author at Modave Summer School in Mathematical Physics, Belgium, June, 2005.
This is a graduate-level introduction to C*-algebras, Hilbert C*-modules, vector bundles, and induced representations of groups and C*-algebras, with applications to quantization theory, phase space localization, and configuration space localization. The reader is supposed to know elementary functional analysis and quantum mechanics.
These notes contain a survey of some aspects of the theory of graded differential algebras and of noncommutative differential calculi as well as of some applications connected with physics. They also give a description of several new developments.
Lecture notes to a one-term course on operator algebras and their application in physics. Very brief and basic introduction to the subject of Banach- and C-star algebras complemented with their appearance in physics. The course is intended at mathematics students in their master program with a basic knowledge of functional analysis and some interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics.
A breakthrough took place in the von Neumann algebra theory when the Tomita-Takesaki theory was established around 1970. Since then, many important issues in the theory were developed through 1970's by Araki, Connes, Haagerup, Takesaki and others, which are already very classics of the von Neumann algebra theory. Nevertheless, it seems still difficult for beginners to access them, though a few big volumes on the theory are available. These lecture notes are delivered as an intensive course in 2019, April at Department of Mathematical Analysis, Budapest University of Technology and Economics. T…
These are the notes for my 2017 Takagi lectures on DT counts of curves in algebraic threefolds. We discuss the fundamentals of the subject, its origins, open questions, and certain recent advances.
These notes offer a lightening introduction to topological quantum field theory in its functorial axiomatisation, assuming no or little prior exposure. We lay some emphasis on the connection between the path integral motivation and the definition in terms symmetric monoidal categories, and we highlight the algebraic formulation emerging from a formal generators-and-relations description. This allows one to understand (oriented, closed) 1- and 2-dimensional TQFTs in terms of a finite amount of algebraic data, while already the 3-dimensional case needs an infinite amount of data. We evade these …
These are notes for four lectures on higher structures in M-theory as presented at workshops at the Erwin Schroedinger Institute and Tohoku University. The first lecture gives an overview of systems of multiple M5-branes and introduces the relevant mathematical structures underlying a local description of higher gauge theory. In the second lecture, we develop the corresponding global picture. A construction of non-abelian superconformal gauge theories in six dimensions using twistor spaces is discussed in the third lecture. The last lecture deals with the problem of higher quantization and its…
These are the notes of five lectures given at the Summer School {\em Geometric and Topological Methods for Quantum Field Theory}, held in Villa de Leyva (Colombia), July 2--20, 2007. The lectures are meant for graduate or almost graduate students in physics or mathematics. They include references, many examples and some exercices. The content is the following. The first lecture is a short introduction to algebraic and proalgebraic groups, based on some examples of groups of matrices and groups of formal series, and their Hopf algebras of coordinate functions. The second lecture presents a very…
In this short lecture, we compute asymptotics of orthogonal polynomials, from a saddle point approximation. This is an example of a calculation which shows the link between integrability, algebraic geometry and random matrices.
This is an introduction to the geometry of compact Riemann surfaces, largely following the books Farkas-Kra, Fay, Mumford Tata lectures. 1) Defining Riemann surfaces with atlases of charts, and as locus of solutions of algebraic equations. 2) Space of meromorphic functions and forms, we classify them with the Newton polygon. 3) Abel map, the Jacobian and Theta functions. 4) The Riemann--Roch theorem that computes the dimension of spaces of functions and forms with given orders of poles and zeros. 5) The moduli space of Riemann surfaces, with its combinatorial representation as Strebel graphs, …
In these lectures I discuss Feynman graphs and the associated Feynman integrals. Of particular interest are the classes functions, which appear in the evaluation of Feynman integrals. The most prominent class of functions is given by multiple polylogarithms. The algebraic properties of multiple polylogarithms are reviewed in the second part of these lectures. The final part of these lectures is devoted to Feynman integrals, which cannot be expressed in terms of multiple polylogarithms. Methods from algebraic geometry provide tools to tackle these integrals.
This course of lectures on the algebraic Bethe ansatz was given in the Scientific and Educational Center of Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow. The course includes both classical well known results and very recent ones.
Traditionally, Hodge structures are associated with complex projective varieties. In my expository lectures I discussed a non-commutative generalization of Hodge structures in deformation quantization and in derived algebraic geometry.
In these introductory lectures we discuss the topic of Yangian symmetry from various perspectives. Forming the classical counterpart of the Yangian and an extension of ordinary Noether symmetries, first the concept of nonlocal charges in classical, two-dimensional field theory is reviewed. We then define the Yangian algebra following Drinfeld's original motivation to construct solutions to the quantum Yang-Baxter equation. Different realizations of the Yangian and its mathematical role as a Hopf algebra and quantum group are discussed. We demonstrate how the Yangian algebra is implemented in q…
First three sections of this overview paper cover classical topics of deformation theory of associative algebras and necessary background material. We then analyze algebraic structures of the Hochschild cohomology and describe the relation between deformations and solutions of the corresponding Maurer-Cartan equation. In Section 6 we generalize the Maurer-Cartan equation to strongly homotopy Lie algebras and prove the homotopy invariance of the moduli space of solutions of this equation. In the last section we indicate the main ideas of Kontsevich's proof of the existence of deformation quanti…
This series of lectures is planned as a generalization of author's large (more than fifteen years) experience of work in the theoretical physics. The modern theoretical physics is based on the group-theoretical approach which generates the formalism of the principal fibre bundles and the instanton approach. The latter is based on the Pontrjagin's degree of map theorem and this theorem is the original ``bridge'' between homology and cohomology theories. The author plans to devote his two first lectures to fibre bundle theory: this is the foundation on which the modern physics rests -- the theor…
This is the text of a series of five lectures given by the author at the "Second Annual Spring Institute on Noncommutative Geometry and Operator Algebras" held at Vanderbilt University in May 2004. It is meant as an overview of recent results illustrating the interplay between noncommutative geometry and arithmetic geometry/number theory.
This is the current form of lecture notes on my approach to field quantization. I explain on a simple scalar-field model the physical motivation and show some preliminary applications (field produced by a pointlike charge, the vacuum-to-vacuum loop diagram, the Casimir presure). The approach is based on an appropriate construction of a representation of harmonic-oscillator Lie algebra and a sequential definition of Dirac deltas.
By the classical genus zero Sugawara construction one obtains from admissible representations of affine Lie algebras (Kac-Moody algebras of affine type) representations of the Virasoro algebra. In this lecture first the classical construction is recalled. Then, after giving a review on the global multi-point algebras of Krichever-Novikov type for compact Riemann surfaces of arbitrary genus, the higher genus Sugawara construction is introduced. Finally, the lecture reports on results obtained in joint work with O.K. Sheinman. We were able to show that also in the higher genus, multi-point situa…
These lecture notes in Lie Groups are designed for a 1--semester third year or graduate course in mathematics, physics, engineering, chemistry or biology. This landmark theory of the 20th Century mathematics and physics gives a rigorous foundation to modern dynamics, as well as field and gauge theories in physics, engineering and biomechanics. We give both physical and medical examples of Lie groups. The only necessary background for comprehensive reading of these notes are advanced calculus and linear algebra.
I will explain my joint paper `Instantons moduli spaces and W-algebras' with A.Braverman, M.Finkelberg, arXiv:1406.2381. I will concentrate on the geometric part, that is a study of perverse sheaves on instanton moduli spaces. I place a particular emphasize on the hyperbolic restriction functor and stable envelop, which are our key tools, and appear also in other situations in geometric representation theory. These are lecture notes for a course in 2015 PCMI.
This is a preliminary version, comments and inputs are welcome. Contents: 1. Introduction. 2. Fuzzy Spaces. 3. Star Products. 4. Scalar Fields on the Fuzzy Sphere. 5. Instantons, Monopoles and Projective Modules. 6. Fuzzy Nonlinear Sigma Models. 7. Fuzzy Gauge Theories. 8. The Dirac Operator and Axial Anomaly. 9. Fuzzy Supersymmetry. 10.Fuzzy Spaces as Hopf Algebras.
