School and Workshop

on

The geometry and integrability
of topological QFT and string theory

University of Warwick

spring school: Monday 24th-Saturday 29th March, 2008
conference: Monday 31st March–Saturday 5th April, 2008

These events will be the climax of the TQFT activity (15th February to 20th April 2008)
of the 2007/2008 Warwick EPSRC Symposium on Algebraic Geometry WAG 2007/08.

Organisers:
Emanuel Scheidegger (Augsburg) and Katrin Wendland (Augsburg),
Ron Donagi (UPenn Philadelphia), Claus Hertling (Mannheim), Nigel Hitchin (Oxford), Miles Reid (Warwick)

Spring school
March 24 - 29, 2008

The geometric properties of spaces of topological quantum field theories, their origin in mathematics and their impact in string theory are the broad topics of this school. In particular, the meaning, applications, and generalisations of the tt* equations and the holomorphic anomaly equations will be taught.
We aim at a graduate and nonspecialist audience with some basic knowledge in algebraic geometry and topological field theory or string theory.
The school will consist of at least four lecture courses, comprised of about three lectures each.


Speakers:

Boris Dubrovin (SISSA),
Claus Hertling (Mannheim),
Marcos Mariño (University of Geneva),
Johannes Walcher (Zurich).

Programme
lecture notes of Marcos Mariño's course


Conference
March 31 – April 5, 2008

The conference will be devoted to recent developments in the study of the geometry and integrability of topological QFT and string theory. The spectrum of ideas we will explore range from the physics of string theory, topological QFT, the formalism of tt* equations and their classical limits, to mathematical rigorous notions such as Dubrovin's Frobenius structures on manifolds and Hertling's TERP structures. Furthermore, the current developments on extending these structures to open strings, to manifolds with prescribed submanifolds and bundles, the so-called D-branes, will be a focus of the conference.


Confirmed speakers:

Murad Alim (LMU München),
Giulio Bonelli (SISSA),
Vincent Bouchard (Harvard),
Andrea Brini (SISSA),
Vicente Cortés (Hamburg),
Duiliu-Emanuel Diaconescu (Rutgers),
Ezra Getzler (Northwestern),
Victor Ginzburg (Chicago),
Manfred Herbst (CERN),
Hiroshi Iritani (Imperial College London),
Ludmil Katzarkov (Miami and IAS Princeton),
Yukiko Konishi (Kyoto),
Andrey Losev (ITEP),
Andy Neitzke (IAS Princeton),
Masa-Hiko Saito (Kobe),
Emanuel Scheidegger (Augsburg),
Christian Sevenheck (Mannheim),
Sergey Shadrin (ETH Zürich),
Duco van Straten (Mainz),
Atsushi Takahashi (Osaka),
Johannes Walcher (Zurich).

Programme



Further confirmed participants include:
Bleybel Ali (Mont Liban Hadath Lebanon), Gavin Brown (Kent), Emma Carberry (Sidney and Augsburg), Nils Carqueville (King's College London), Hua Liang Chang (SISSA), Alessio Corti (Imperial College London), Sarah Davis (Warwick), Yassir Ibrahim Dinar (Khartoum), Will Donovan (Imperial College London), Michael Doré (Warwick), Oliver Gray (Augsburg), Ignacio de Gregorio (Warwick), Umar Hayat (Warwick), Claus Hertling (Mannheim), Sohail Iqbal (Warwick), John Jones (Warwick), Shinsuke Kawai (Helsinki), Johanna Knapp (München), Katrin Leschke (Leicester), Ana Cristina Lopez-Martin (Salamanca), Diane Maclagan (Warwick), Marta Mazzocco (Manchester), Gabor Megyesi (Manchester), David Mond (Warwick), Antonio Moro (Loughborough), Alvaro Nolla de Celis (Warwick), Karol Palka (Warsaw), Sara Pasquetti (Neuchatel), Roberto Pignatelli (Trento), Thomas Reichelt (Mannheim), Miles Reid (Warwick), Paolo Rossi (SISSA), Dmitriy Rumynin (Warwick), Ed Segal (Imperial College London), Vasilisa Shramchenko (Oxford), Vid Stojevic (Hamburg), Michal Szczachor (Warsaw), Balázs Szendröi (Oxford), Richard Thomas (Imperial College London), Alexandr Usnich (Paris), Kota Yoshioka (Kobe), Katrin Wendland (Augsburg), Bruce Westbury (Warwick), Shengtian Zhou (Warwick), Francesco Zucconi (Udine).

If you are interested in participating in any part of the TQFT activity, please register at https://www.warwick.ac.uk/mrc/events.php.
There is limited funding available, but funding decisions will be made later.
For any enquiries about this activity, please contact Emanuel Scheidegger and Katrin Wendland at TQFT@Math.Uni-Augsburg.De.