Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

Return to Colloquia & Seminar listing

Tractors, Gravity, Two Times and Higher Spins

Mathematical Physics Seminar

Speaker: Andrew Waldron, UCDavis, Math.Dept
Location: 2112 MSB
Start time: Wed, May 11 2011, 3:10PM

Simple physical reasoning shows, that although not themselves usually not conformally invariant, physical models quite generally can be formulated in terms of conformal geometry. The mathematical machinery underlying this development is a calculus of conformal invariance based around ``tractors''---sections of a bundle with connection intimately related to Einstein's equations. These ideas are also connected to approaches that describe dualities between models by introducing a second time coordinate. We describe how models arranging from gravity to higher spins may be described in this way.