Annual Report 2005 - Fields Institute - University of Toronto

Shiraz Minwalla of the Tata Institute and Harvard University
explained recent work on relating “plasma balls”
(bubbles of deconfined phase within a confining gauge theory)
to black holes. This was another example of the ability
of the AdS/CFT correspondence to relate gravity and gauge
theory in interesting ways. Antoine Van Proeyen of K.U.
Leuven gave on overview of supergravity theories. Jerome
Gauntlett of Imperial College described recent progress
in obtaining new AdS solutions for use in the AdS/CFT
correspondence. Renata Kallosh of Stanford University
discussed new ideas for stabilizing moduli to obtain realistic
solutions in string theory. Sumit Das of the University
of Kentucky talked about a toy two-dimensional version of
string theory, and its use in understanding cosmological
and black hole physics.
But of course, the most interesting outcome of any workshop
is the *new* research that it generates. Already, a
number papers have appeared on the arxiv acknowledging
the importance of the workshop in their generation, but as
usual one expects that the best is yet to come.
Speakers:
Miguel Costa (Porto U.)
Chronology protection in string theory
Sumit Das (Kentucky)
Time dependent backgrounds in 2D string theory
Bernard de Wit (Utrecht)
Variational principles for BPS black hole entropy
Henriette Elvang (UCSB)
Non-supersymmetric black rings
Roberto Emparan (Barcelona)
Nutty black rings and 4D black holes
Jerome Gauntlett (Imperial College)
AdS solutions and some deformations
Gary Horowitz (UCSB)
Holographic description of a cosmological singularity
Renata Kallosh (Stanford)
A simple example of moduli fixing
Alex Maloney (SLAC & Stanford)
T h e m a t i c P r o g r a m s
Stringy resolution of null singularities
David Mateos (Perimeter)
Microscopics of black rings
Shiraz Minwalla (Tata Inst. & Harvard)
Plasma balls in confining large N gauge theories
Harvey Reall (UCSB)
Supersymmetric black rings
Simon Ross (U. Durham)
Non-supersymmetric smooth geometries and D1-D5-P bound
states
Eva Silverstein (Stanford)
The uses of tachyons
Antoine Van Proeyen (K.U. Leuven)
The geometry and landscape of supergravity
Workshop on Schubert Calculus and Schubert Varieties
June 8–12, 2005
Held at the Fields Institute
Organizers: Lisa Jeffrey, Megumi Harada, and Alistair Savage
(Toronto); and Alexander Yong (UC Berkeley)
The topics of this workshop are at the intersection of algebraic
geometry, representation theory, symplectic geometry,
and combinatorics. Although the basic questions of the
field trace back to the earliest roots of algebraic geometry,
exciting and fundamental developments are in full swing
today.
Here is a simple prototypical problem of Schubert calculus:
how many red lines R 1 and R 2 in 3-space (think real, then
complex, then projective) intersect given “random” blue
lines B 1 , B 2 , B 3 , B 4 ? The answer is 2.
In the 19th century, the “proof’” would be as follows: move
B 1 and B 2 until they intersect, and do the same for B 3 and B 4 .
Then R 1 is defined by the two points of intersection and R 2
is defined by the intersection of the two constructed planes.
The claim is that one can “degenerate” the general situation
to this special situation without changing the answer.
Justifying such claims for this problem and many others
became the topic of Hilbert’s 15th problem (which is now
mainly solved, thanks to decades worth of developments in
intersection theory).
Fields Institute 2005 ANNUAL REPORT 30