Jan. 30, 2006 (Wednesday)

Tilings, Dimers, and Quiver Gauge Theories

Amihay Hanany
MIT Center for Theoretical Physics

This lecture is an introduction into the recent progress in the study of
the duality between string theory and gauge theory, based on the dynamics of string theory branes. We have uncovered new links between "dimers" of statistical mechanics and combinatorics, and "quiver gauge theories" which describe the dynamics of branes in string theory.

The new insights have lead to a discovery of a large new class of quantum
field theories, the only known examples of theories that are minimally
supersymmetric, scale invariant, and 3+1 dimensionsional. Furthermore,
there is an intimate connection with problems in algebraic geometry which
will be touched upon during the talk.

The recent progress offers new tools for analyzing and solving
supersymmetric gauge theories, and a deeper understanding of their
relation to string theories.

Time: 3:00 pm
Location: Lecture Room 5

The reception will be at 2:30 pm in room N201