Consortium Distinguished Lecture Series
Sergei Gukov

From Turaev to Rokhlin via VOA Characters and Curve Counting I

Dr. Sergei Gukov
California Institute of Technology

Tuesday, November 16th, 2021, 11:30am (Miami)
Via Zoom
Click here to view video

Abstract: These lectures will present a board survey of recent work on new q-series invariants of 3-manifolds labeled by Spin-C structures. While the original motivation for studying these invariants is rooted in topology, they exhibit a number of unexpected properties and connections to other areas of mathematics, e.g. turn out to be characters of logarithmic vertex algebras. The integer coefficients of these q-series invariants can be understood as the answer to a certain enumerative problem, and when q tends to special values these invariants relate to other invariants of 3-manifolds labeled by Spin and Spin-C structures.

From Turaev to Rokhlin via VOA Characters and Curve Counting II

Dr. Sergei Gukov
California Institute of Technology

Wednesday, November 17th, 2021, 11:30am (Miami)
Via Zoom
Click here to view video

Abstract: These lectures will present a board survey of recent work on new q-series invariants of 3-manifolds labeled by Spin-C structures. While the original motivation for studying these invariants is rooted in topology, they exhibit a number of unexpected properties and connections to other areas of mathematics, e.g. turn out to be characters of logarithmic vertex algebras. The integer coefficients of these q-series invariants can be understood as the answer to a certain enumerative problem, and when q tends to special values these invariants relate to other invariants of 3-manifolds labeled by Spin and Spin-C structures.