Derek Wise

I am a VIGRE postdoc and Visiting Research Assistant Professor at U.C. Davis. My research is in mathematical physics, especially classical and quantum gravity, and applications of geometry, topology, and category theory to physics.

Latest news:

  • This quarter at UC Davis, I'm organizing a seminar on "Quantum Gravity and Strings". Here are links to abstracts of upcoming talks (also, past talks). Seminar participants, and others, may also be interested in the new page of quantum gravity resources I'm working on.
  • Pic Curriculum Vitae
    Research
    Papers
    Talks
    QG Seminar
    Teaching


    Education

    Ph.D in Mathematics, University of California, Riverside (15 June 2007)
      Thesis: Topological Gauge Theory, Cartan Geometry, and Gravity
      Advisor: John C. Baez
    M.S. in Mathematics, University of California, Riverside (20 March 2004)
    B.S. in Physics, Abilene Christian University (8 May 1998)
    B.A. in Mathematics, Abilene Christian University (8 May 1998)

    Research

    Quantum Gravity      Discrete p-form Electromagnetism      Category Theory      Elementary Particles     

    Quantum Gravity

    My main research focus these days is on certain aspects of quantum gravity. More specifically, I've been studying aspects of spin foam quantization and MacDowell-Mansouri gravity.

    The following paper explains the geometry behind the MacDowell-Mansouri approach to gravity:

    MacDowell-Mansouri Gravity and Cartan Geometry
    Derek K Wise gr-qc/0611154

    The past two summers I've been a visitor at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario. I spent much of my time there working with Laruent Freidel and Aristide Baratin on categorical 2-group representation theory, particularly as it relates to their spin foam model. We're now finishing up a paper on this subject, with John Baez.

    I've spoken in the quantum gravity seminar at PI during both visits:

    This earlier talk was related to another recent paper: Exotic Statistics for Strings in 4d BF Theory with John Baez and Alissa Crans. In this paper, we study string-like excitations in 4d topological gravity, giving a concrete example of a 4d theory with matter obeying statistics that are neither fermionic nor bosonic. You can read summaries of this work in TWF232, and on Urs Schreiber's blog. This paper, along with the one above on MacDowell-Mansouri gravity, is part of my Ph.D. thesis, which should be available online soon. The exotic statistics paper was recently published in Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics.

    Here are the abstract and slides for my talk at Loops '05.

    Here are my notes from John Baez's Quantum Gravity Seminar (most of which are actually not directly about quantum gravity). You can also read some of my notes based on John's lectures on Classical Mechanics.

    Discrete p-form Electromagnetism

    p-form electromagnetism is a generalization of electromagnetism in which the gauge field, usually a connection on a U(1) bundle, becomes a "p-connection" on a U(1) "p-bundle". The rationale for the name is that, locally, such a p-connection is described by a p-form. In the following paper, I study discrete versions of p-form electromagnetism:

    p-form electromagnetism on discrete spacetimes
    Derek K Wise 2006 Class. Quantum Grav. 23 5129-5176

    I have a separate webpage on p-form electromagnetism with a bunch of related maerials, including slides from several talks on this and related subjects.

    Category Theory

    I am very interested in category theory and its applications to physics, topology, and geometry.

    In April 2007, I gave a talk on Loops, Bubbles, and Trace and Divergences in Quantum Field Theory at the workshop TRACES'07 (Applications of traces to algebra, analysis and categorical logic) at the University of Ottawa.

    October 20-25, 2006, I was at the University of Ottawa, attending the Category Theory Octoberfest 2006, and talking to Rick Blute.

    In June 2006, I spoke at the International Category Theory Conference, CT 2006, at White Point Beach, Nova Scotia. My talk was entitled "Chain Field Theory" and was be based on my work on discrete p-form electromagnetism. However, it focused more on category-theoretic aspects of the work than my previous talks and papers on this subject.


    Teaching

    In the Fall 2007 quarter at UC Davis, I taught Partial Differential Equations (MAT-118A). This Winter quarter, I'm teaching the second part of the same class (MAT-118B). Here is the schedule of classes for the quarter.

    To see a complete list of math and physics courses I've taught or assisted, click here.


    External Links

  • Links to some friends' webpages:
  • A picture of me and some of John Baez's other graduate students (all of whom have now graduated).
  • Wikipedia
  • A cool resource for searching the text of the Bible in tons of translations.

  • © 2003-2008 Derek Wise       Last update: 26 January 2008