Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

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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?)