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Abelian gauge fields and duality

GEOMETRY AND QUANTUM THEORY

When: April 14, 2026
4:15 pm - 6:30 pm
Where: Science Center 507
Address: 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
Speaker: Dan Freed (Harvard)

Motivated by the new paper arXiv:2603.19161, I will give a general talk about abelian gauge fields, including duality. I will start with classical Maxwell theory, then discuss various “finite” examples, the typical p-form abelian gauge field, and some exotic examples such as Ramond–Ramond fields and the B-field in superstring theory. I will then get to the new paper and, time permitting, will suggest a very general framework that covers all examples.