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Braids, Representations, and all that
Student-Run Research| Speaker: | Momar Dieng, UC Davis Mathematics |
| Location: | 693 Kerr |
| Start time: | Wed, Mar 7 2001, 12:10PM |
Description
This is talk is intended as a (very) gentle introduction to the field of
combinatorial representation theory, and its applications to Physics. We
will present the basic ideas of representation theory in the context of
the symmetric group. We will try to motivate the exposition with a
beautifully simple and powerful application: the theory of molecular
vibrations. If time permits, we shall show how the symmetric group can be
embedded in a more interesting structure called the braid group, and
explore some connections with quantum statistics (e.g. why are there only
fermions and bosons...or are there?)