Seminar Calendar
for events the day of Thursday, October 29, 2009.

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Thursday, October 29, 2009

Mathematical and theoretical physics
11:30 am   in 322 Loomis,  Thursday, October 29, 2009
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Submitted by mando.
Joseph Marsano (University of Chicago Physics and EFI)
F-theory and GUTs
Abstract: F-theory has emerged as a promising framework for engineering supersymmetric Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) in string theory. In this talk, we will describe recent progress in this field with an emphasis on connecting "local" and "global" approaches. The "local" approach, which we shall review, focuses on only that part of the internal geometry probed by particle physics experiments. This is the analog of bottom-up phenomenology and has led to a variety of "local" models that can reproduce several important qualitative features of the Standard Model. The "global" approach, however, is the analog of top-down phenomenology and focuses only on compact, globally consistent string backgrounds. We will describe both approaches in detail and how merging them tightly constrains the particle physics models that can arise from F-theory models in general.

Group Theory Seminar
1:00 pm   in Altgeld Hall 347,  Thursday, October 29, 2009
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Submitted by kapovitc.
Nathan Dunfield (UIUC Math)
To Be Announced
Abstract: The talk is cancelled due to the speaker's illness

Number Theory Seminar
1:00 pm   in 241 Altgeld Hall,  Thursday, October 29, 2009
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Submitted by jarouse.
S. Bhargava (University of Mysore)
On a function which unifies the cubic analogues of the Jacobian theta function
Abstract: The purpose of this talk is to give an account of some of the properties of a function which unifies the Hirschhorn-Garvan-Borwein cubic analogues a(q,z), b(q,z) and c(q,z) of the Jacobian theta function. In particular, we give some modular equations and a cubic analogue of Ramanujan's modular transformation for his f(a,b).

Analysis Seminar
2:00 pm   in 243 Altgeld Hall,  Thursday, October 29, 2009
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Submitted by aimo.
Alexander Tumanov (Department of Mathematics, University of Illinois)
Thom's transversality and Whitney's approximation theorems for pseudo-holomorphic discs
Abstract: Singularities of holomorphic curves can be perturbed away locally. The corresponding result for pseudoholomorphic curves was proved (McDuff, 1991) by analyzing singularities of the curves. We prove a global version for pseudo-holomorphic discs. Following the proof in the smooth category, we derive the result from a version of Thom's transversality theorem. The main difficulty in the proof is that the equation for infinitesimal perturbations of big pseudo-holomorphic discs a priori involves an integral operator with nontrivial kernel. This is a joint work with A. Sukhov.