Three-dimensional mirror symmetry and real life

Speaker: Andrei Okounkov

Venue: Room 210, Haina Building 2, Zijingang Campus

Abstract: Enumerative geometers and their colleagues in representation theory and mathematical physics are very excited about the new perspectives on old and new problems offered by the nascent field of 3-dimensional mirror symmetry. While most formulations or explanations of what 3-dimensional mirror symmetry is require a lot of prerequisites and a high level of abstraction, some of its core predictions can be easily cast in the language that people like P.L. Chebyshev, C.G. Jacobi, and I.G. Macdonald would have no problem grasping. This is what I will try to do in this talk, which I hope will be accessible to the general mathematical audience.