TSVP Talk: "Special Holonomy in Geometry and Physics" by Izar Alonso Lorenzo

Title: Special Holonomy in Geometry and Physics

Speaker: Izar Alonso Lorenzo, ICMAT-CSIC

Abstract: Geometric spaces with Special Holonomy have been a topic of great interest in mathematics since Berger wrote down a classification of all the possible holonomy groups in 1955. These special geometries are also of great interest in String Theory - the paradigm that tries to unify the two modern Physics Theories of General Relativity and Quantum mechanics - which prescribes that the Universe can be modeled by a geometric space with 10 or 11 dimensions. The extra dimensions above four are compactified into a geometric space which has a special holonomy group.In this talk, we introduce spaces with special holonomy, provide examples and highlight its connections to other areas of mathematics and theoretical physics, such as algebra via the quaternions and octonions, and the aforementioned string theory.This talk is aimed at a general scientific audience.

Profile: Izar Alonso Lorenzo is a postdoctoral researcher at the Mathematical Sciences Institute (ICMAT) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), working on Differential Geometry. She specializes in the fields of special holonomy and higher dimensional gauge theory. She obtained her PhD at the University of Oxford in 2023 and has also worked as an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University before moving to Madrid.

Language: English

Target audience: General audience/everyone at OIST and beyond.
Freely accessible to all OIST members and guests without registration.

This talk will also be broadcast online via Zoom:
Meeting ID: 993 1216 5065
Passcode: 603487

※ Please note that this event may be recorded and the videos uploaded. In addition, photos may be taken during the event. These are intended for publication online (the OIST website, social media, etc.)※