Australian Category Seminar

Fun with supersymmetry

Alexander Shermanยท25 September 2024

I'll introduce the mathematics of supersymmetry, explaining both the "physical" intuition as well as how super mathematics arises from the world of tensor categories. After such generalities, I'll delve into a developing analogy between supergroups over the complex numbers and the modular representations of finite groups. In particular, it is possible to define the notion of a Sylow subgroup, as well as the analogue of a p-group, in the super setting. This opens up the possibility of applying a wealth of techniques developed for finite groups in the super setting. Part of joint works with Julia Pevtsova, Vera Serganova, and Dmitry Vaintrob.

The talk will be accessible to a broad audience, although a bit of finite group theory will be assumed.

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