Organized by Mina Aganagic, Sujay Nair, Peng Zhou and Jasper van de Kreeke. Weekly on Mondays 2:10 PM (PT) at 402 Physics South. You are invited for lunch on the 4th floor of Physics South before the seminar. Subscribe to the mailing list. Join via zoom. Youtube video archive

Date	Speaker	Title	Link
Sep 23	Catharina Stroppel	Towards a higher dimensional TQFT(I)
Sep 30	Catharina Stroppel	Towards a higher dimensional TQFT(II)
Oct 7	Yixuan Li
Oct 14	Eugene Gorsky
Oct 21	Kifung Chan
Oct 28
Nov 4	Mauricio Romo
Nov 18	Brian Williams
Dec 2
Dec 9
Jan 6
Jan 20
Jan 27
Feb 3
Feb 24
Mar 3
Mar 10
Mar 17
Mar 31
Apr 7
Apr 14
Apr 21
Apr 28
May 5
May 12
May 19
May 26

Seminar archive: Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Spring 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2022, Fall 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2020, Summer 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2019, Spring 2019, Fall 2018, Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016

A note to the speakers: This is a research seminar, intended for mathematicians and physicists. For the speaker to successfully reach the audience in both fields, it is important to explain, as clearly as possible: the motivations for the work, questions addressed, key ideas. The audience may fail to appreciate the glory of the result, otherwise.

Sep 23: Catharina Stroppel (University of Bonn)

Towards a higher dimensional TQFT: categorified quantum group invariants

This is the first of two talks. I will give an overview on algebraic categorification of tensors products of type A quantum group representations emphasising the role of (categorified) skew Howe duality. The results are in principle not new, but the focus will be on explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the existing approaches. In particular I like to illustrate why tensor products are supposed to be difficult and outline the limits of the existing construction. 

Sep 30th: Catharina Stroppel (University of Bonn)

Towards a higher dimensional TQFT:  a (braided) monoidal category of Soergel bimodules

Starting from braided monoidal categories of quantum group representations and categorification results one comes to the question whether categorification can be used to construct a corresponding braided monoidal 2-category. In this talk we start from the observation that the Hecke algebras for all symmetric groups taken together form a braided monoidal category that controls all quantum link invariants of type A. We then discuss the problem of categorification and present some answers using Soergel bimodule categories. This is partially based on joint work with Aaron-Maazel Gee, Leon Liu, David Reutter and Paul Wedrich.