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10/09/2008, 15:00 — 16:00 — Room P12, Mathematics Building
, California Institute of Technology

Electric-magnetic duality and Langlands duality

It is a well-known fact that Maxwell electrodynamics without sources has a symmetry which exchanges electric and magnetic fields. This is known as electric-magnetic duality, and it holds both on the classical and quantum levels. Remarkably, there is strong evidence that electric-magnetic duality also holds in quantum Yang-Mills theory, where it relates theories with different (dual) gauge groups. I will discuss how this phenomenon is related to Langlands phenomena in representation theory.

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The Mathematics Colloquium is a series of monthly talks organized by the Department of Mathematics of IST, aiming to be a forum for the presentation of mathematical ideas or ideas about Mathematics. The Colloquium welcomes the participation of faculty, researchers and undergraduate or graduate students, of IST or other institutions, and is seen as an opportunity of bringing together and fostering the building up of ideas in an informal atmosphere.

Organizers: Conceição Amado, Lina Oliveira e Maria João Borges.