Early Career Researchers Session

EMYA - SCM, Wednesday 7 October, 16:00 h

Wednesday 7 October, 16:00 h  at room Prat de la Riba
ORG: Blas Fernández, Cristina Molero-Río,  Belén Pulido, Roser Homs

Mathematics Online Seminar Series (MOSS)
Special hybrid edition SCM – EMYA

ORG: Blas Fernández, Cristina Molero-Río,  Belén Pulido, Roser Homs

Speaker: Elba Garcia Failde (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)

Title: The negative counterpart of Witten’s r-spin conjecture

Organizers: Blas Fernández, Cristina Molero-Río,  Belén Pulido, Roser Homs

The negative counterpart of Witten’s r-spin conjecture

Elba Garcia Failde (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)

 

Abstract:
The moduli space of algebraic curves lies at the crossroads of geometry, topology, and mathematical physics. A landmark result in the subject originated from a 1990 conjecture of Witten, proved by Kontsevich, which relates intersection theory on moduli spaces of curves to the KdV integrable hierarchy. This correspondence may be viewed as the case r = 2 of a broader family of theories.

In 2017, Norbury proposed a surprising analogue involving negative square roots of the canonical bundle, corresponding to r = -2. In joint work with N. Chidambaram and A. Giacchetto, we proved this conjecture and derived new relations among tautological classes on the moduli space of curves.

More generally, we introduced a new family of cohomology classes associated with negative r-th roots of the canonical bundle. These classes form a cohomological field theory that can be regarded as a negative counterpart of Witten’s r-spin theory, while exhibiting a remarkably simple geometric structure. We showed that the resulting intersection numbers can be computed recursively by the so-called topological recursion and, equivalently, W-constraints.

The talk will provide an overview of these developments and the connections they reveal between the moduli spaces of curves, integrable systems, and topological recursion.

 


Check Seminar series at Youtube link

Round table: Challenges of being an early career researcher in math today

Speakers:

Marina Vegué (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)

Anna Jové (Imperial College London) 

Carles Checa (University of Copenhagen)

Donato Scarcella (Universitat de Barcelona)