Though I missed the first day of presentations, I did get to hear about a lot of interesting topics on Thursday. Probably the most interesting thing that I learned was that there is an instanton solution to some physical problems which comes from a critical region in the problem description and allows one to move around it. Most of the math/physics background behind that idea was beyond my knowledge unfortunately, but it does seem like a cool concept.
My favorite presentation was probably Kenny’s on Lie Algebras and Particle Physics. I liked the outline he used at the beginning of the presentation to let us know what he would cover and make his talk more clear. Kenny also gave examples of Lie groups used in physics which made it easier to follow. He also did a good job discussing the significance of his topic with his discussion of the mass-gap problem and work done by NC State professors like Dr. Ji using Lie groups.
While I enjoyed all of the presentations I saw, I would say Kenny’s had the best explanation of the background necessary to understand his presentation and gave the clearest picture of the relevance of his topic.
hduan2
April 22, 2018 — 18:45
I think that Kenny should have actually shown us how to use lie algebra in particle physics. A formula is more powerful when you want to convince people math is important. I hope he did write about this in his paper.
Bryan
April 15, 2018 — 20:07
Grant. I totally agree: The instanton solution was pretty interesting to hear about, despite our lack of background knowledge of QFT. Unfortunately the talk was less accessible due to this, but it was a great talk anyway!