CMSA Combinatorics, Physics and Probability: Moduli space of tropical curves, graph Laplacians and physics.

CMSA GENERAL RELATIVITY SEMINAR, SEMINARS

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March 15, 2022 9:00 am - 10:00 am
via Zoom Video Conferencing
Speaker:

Francis Brown - University of Oxford, All Souls College


I will first review the construction of the moduli space of tropical curves (or metric graphs), and its relation to graph complexes. The graph Laplacian may be interpreted as a tropical version of the classical Torelli map and its determinant is the Kirchhoff graph polynomial (also called 1st Symanzik), which is one of the two key components in Feynman integrals in high energy physics.The other component is the so-called 2nd Symanzik polynomial, which is defined for graphs with external half edges and involves particle masses (edge colourings). I will explain how this too may be interpreted as the determinant of a generalised graph Laplacian, and how it leads to a volumetric interpretation of a certain class of Feynman integrals.

For information on how to join, please see:  https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/seminars-and-colloquium/