Event time:
Friday, March 1, 2013 - 8:00am to 9:00am
Location:
431DL
Speaker:
Dhruv Ranganathan
Speaker affiliation:
Yale University
Event description:
How many lines are there in the plane passing through 2 given points? How about degree d curves through 3d-1 points? These kinds of questions date back hundreds of years, and are generally understood to be incredibly difficult to answer. In the 1990s the work of string theorists led to the development of the so-called Gromov-Witten (GW) invariants, which revolutionized the subject of enumerative algebraic geometry. In this talk I will give a friendly introduction to the approach of Gromov-Witten theory and quantum cohomology. Nothing beyond some basic topological ideas will be assumed.