Michael Singer (University College, London) will speak in the geometry seminar on the 20th February. The talk will take place in the Salle de Profs (9th floor, NO) at 13.30pm. Michael’s title is “Asymptotic geometry of monopole moduli space and the Sen Conjecture” and the abstract is below.
The moduli space of (non-abelian, euclidean, SU(2)) monopoles has been of interest to mathematicians and mathematical physicists since the mid-1980s. It was proved around that time that the natural L^2 metric is hyperKaehler and complete; and its role in low-energy dynamics of monopoles was extensively discussed and analyzed. After the advent of S-duality in supersymmetric gauge theories in the 1990s, Sen made a striking conjecture about the spectrum of supersymmetric quantum states on the monopole moduli spaces. From the mathematical point of view, Sen’s conjectures are about the existence of L^2 harmonic forms on monopole moduli spaces. A mathematically rigorous proof of Sen’s conjectures requires a good understanding of the asymptotic properties of the monopole metric I shall describe recent progress on this problem which will at least prove a part of Sen’s conjectures. This is joint work with Karsten Fritzsch and Chris Kottke.
and abstract are to be confirmed.