Open Neighborhood Seminar: A moduli space problem in condensed matter physics

This talk is an elementary account of what is at first a surprising application of stable homotopy theory to theoretical physics. No specialized background is required; the storyline is the focus, not technical details. The main result is a classification of invertible gapped phases in quantum mechanical systems. We will take a journey to get there, along the way meeting moduli problems in geometry and topological field theory. This is joint work with Mike Hopkins.