Skip navigation.

Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the UniverseWPI

IPMU Komaba Seminar

Date: Tuesday, February 12, from 17:00 - 18:30
Place: Room 056, Mathematical Sciences Building, Komaba Campus, The University of Tokyo
Lecturer: Katrin Wendland (University of Augsburg)
Title: "How to lift a construction by Hiroshi Inose to conformal field theory"
Abstract: The moduli space of Einstein metrics is well known to algebraic and differential geometers. Physicists have introduced the notion of conformal field theories (CFTs) associated to K3, and the moduli space of these objects is well understood as well. It can be interpreted as a generalisation of the moduli space of Einstein metrics on K3, which allows us to introduce this space without having to use background knowledge from conformal field theory. However, just as no smooth Einstein metrics on K3 are known explicitly, the explicit construction of CFTs associated to K3 in general remains an open problem. The only known constructions which allow to deal with families of CFTs give CFTs associated to K3 surfaces with orbifold singularities.
We use a classical construction by Hiroshi Inose to explicitly construct a family of CFTs which are associated to a family of smoot! h algebraic K3 surfaces. Although these CFTs were known before, it is remarkable that they allow a description in terms of a family of smooth surfaces whose complex structure is deformed while all other geometric data remain fixed.
We also discuss possible extensions of this result to higher dimensional Calabi-Yau threefolds.
Note: This seminar is organized by Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU) and Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Tokyo.