Representations, Geometry, and Quantization

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

The conference "Representations, Geometry, and Quantization" will take place May 28 - June 1, 2018, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since the introduction of quantum mechanics a hundred years ago, a fundamental problem has been to understand the relationship between classical physics, which is extraordinarily accurate and complete as a description of the world at large scales and low energies, and quantum physics, which offers an apparently different description of the world, including small scales and high energies. This relationship has many parallels in mathematics, and understanding those parallels is a source of inspiration in both mathematics and physics. The conference will bring together world leaders in this subject to present their research. Some particular recent developments to be discussed include: an algorithm to identify unitary representations of real reductive Lie groups; improved understanding of character theory for tilting modules; geometric quantization for noncompact manifolds; and mirror symmetry for Grassmannians. The conference web site is https://math.mit.edu/conferences/kostant/. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.