Edward Witten is an American mathematical and theoretical physicist. He is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Witten is a researcher in string theory, quantum gravity, supersymmetric quantum field theories, and other areas of mathematical physics. Witten's work has also significantly impacted pure mathematics. In 1990, he became the first physicist to be awarded a Fields Medal by the International Mathematical Union, for his mathematical insights in physics, such as his 1981 proof of the positive energy theorem in general relativity, and his interpretation of the Jones invariants of knots as Feynman integrals. He is considered the practical founder of M-theory.
The Chern–Simons theory is a 3-dimensional topological quantum field theory of Schwarz type developed by Edward Witten. It was discovered first by mathematical physicist Albert Schwarz. It is named after mathematicians Shiing-Shen Chern and James Harris Simons, who introduced the Chern–Simons 3-form. In the Chern–Simons theory, the action is proportional to the integral of the Chern–Simons 3-form.
In gauge theory and mathematical physics, a topological quantum field theory is a quantum field theory which computes topological invariants.
While working on the mathematical physics of an interacting, relativistic, quantum field theory, Rudolf Haag developed an argument against the existence of the interaction picture, a result now commonly known as Haag’s theorem. Haag’s original proof relied on the specific form of then-common field theories, but subsequently generalized by a number of authors, notably Hall & Wightman, who concluded that no single, universal Hilbert space representation can describe both free and interacting fields. A generalization due to Reed & Simon shows that applies to free neutral scalar fields of different masses, which implies that the interaction picture is always inconsistent, even in the case of a free field.
Ian Grojnowski is a mathematician working at the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at the University of Cambridge.
In theoretical physics and mathematics, a Wess–Zumino–Witten (WZW) model, also called a Wess–Zumino–Novikov–Witten model, is a type of two-dimensional conformal field theory named after Julius Wess, Bruno Zumino, Sergei Novikov and Edward Witten. A WZW model is associated to a Lie group, and its symmetry algebra is the affine Lie algebra built from the corresponding Lie algebra. By extension, the name WZW model is sometimes used for any conformal field theory whose symmetry algebra is an affine Lie algebra.
In mathematics, specifically in symplectic topology and algebraic geometry, Gromov–Witten (GW) invariants are rational numbers that, in certain situations, count pseudoholomorphic curves meeting prescribed conditions in a given symplectic manifold. The GW invariants may be packaged as a homology or cohomology class in an appropriate space, or as the deformed cup product of quantum cohomology. These invariants have been used to distinguish symplectic manifolds that were previously indistinguishable. They also play a crucial role in closed type IIA string theory. They are named after Mikhail Gromov and Edward Witten.
Asım Orhan Barut was a Turkish-American theoretical physicist.
In theoretical physics, the BRST formalism, or BRST quantization denotes a relatively rigorous mathematical approach to quantizing a field theory with a gauge symmetry. Quantization rules in earlier quantum field theory (QFT) frameworks resembled "prescriptions" or "heuristics" more than proofs, especially in non-abelian QFT, where the use of "ghost fields" with superficially bizarre properties is almost unavoidable for technical reasons related to renormalization and anomaly cancellation.
The Geometry Festival is an annual mathematics conference held in the United States.
In the mathematical field of knot theory, a quantum knot invariant or quantum invariant of a knot or link is a linear sum of colored Jones polynomial of surgery presentations of the knot complement.
John Lawrence CardyFRS is a British-American theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work in theoretical condensed matter physics and statistical mechanics, and in particular for research on critical phenomena and two-dimensional conformal field theory.
Matilde Marcolli is an Italian and American mathematical physicist. She has conducted research work in areas of mathematics and theoretical physics; obtained the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Sofia Kovalevskaya Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Marcolli has authored and edited numerous books in the field. She is currently the Robert F. Christy Professor of Mathematics and Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the California Institute of Technology.
Kai Behrend is a German mathematician. He is a professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Mark William Gross is an American mathematician, specializing in differential geometry, algebraic geometry, and mirror symmetry.
Katarzyna (Kasia) Anna Rejzner is a Polish mathematical physicist specializing in algebraic quantum field theory and the theory of renormalization, including the Batalin–Vilkovisky formalism. She works as a reader in mathematics at the University of York.
Yongbin Ruan is a Chinese mathematician, specializing in algebraic geometry, differential geometry, and symplectic geometry with applications to string theory.
Giovanni Felder is a Swiss mathematical physicist and mathematician, working at ETH Zurich. He specializes in algebraic and geometric properties of integrable models of statistical mechanics and quantum field theory.
Krzysztof Gawędzki was a Polish mathematical physicist, a graduate of the University of Warsaw and professor at the École normale supérieure de Lyon. He was primarily known for his research on quantum field theory and statistical physics. In 2022, he shared the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics with Antti Kupiainen.
