All Questions
7 questions
122
votes
7
answers
15k
views
Topology and the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics
I was very happy to learn that the work which led to the award of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics (shared between David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz) uses Topology. In ...
7
votes
3
answers
2k
views
An Intriguing Tapestry: Number triangles, polytopes, Grassmannians, and scattering amplitudes
What are the roles that the classic number arrays-- Eulerian, Narayana--play in the application of totally non-negative Grassmannians, or amplituhedrons, to string / twistor scattering theory?
(This ...
- 10.5k
23
votes
1
answer
4k
views
The Dedekind eta function in physics
This interesting little fellow (a nice introduction is the video "Mock Modular Forms are Everywhere" by Cheng and Felder) popped up in some operator algebra (Witt / Virasoro Lie algebra) I ...
18
votes
3
answers
2k
views
Can eta invariant be written in terms of topological data?
The eta invariant was introduced by Atiyah, Patodi, and Singer. It roughly measures the asymmetry of the spectrum of a self-adjoint elliptic operator with respect to the origin. In the paper "Exotic ...
- 875
34
votes
8
answers
6k
views
Applications of super-mathematics to non-super mathematics
Supergeometry and more broadly supermathematics has been around for few decades. Since its introduction by physicists, there has been an some mathematical interest in them.
Although interesting in its ...
24
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Combinatorial spin structures
I would like to know how to define spin structures combinatorially, for an oriented smooth manifold equipped with a triangulation. In the case of a 2d manifold, spin structures correspond to ...
- 1,579
2
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Uniqueness on square root of complex Line Bundle
Let $L$ be a line bundle over a compex manifold $X$, a square-root of $L$ is a line bundle $M$ such that $M^{\otimes2}=L$. My question is when the square-root of Line Bundle is unique?
user21574