09/07/2002, 09:30 — 10:30 — Amphitheatre Ea2, North Tower, IST
Alexander Varchenko, North Carolina
Arrangements, Hypergeometric Functions, and KZ-Type Equations (II)
Conformal blocks in conformal field theory and their quantizations are solutions of Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov differential and difference equations. The geometric version of these objects is multidimensional hypergeometric functions and hypergeometric equaitons. The interrelations of these subjects, the theory of solvable models in statistical mechanics, and representation theory will be discussed.
The course will be elementary and accessible to graduate students and advanced undergraduate students.