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Magic angles are a hot topic in condensed matter physics:
when two sheets of graphene are twisted by those angles the resulting material is superconducting. I will present a very simple operator whose spectral properties are thought to determine which angles are magical. It comes from a 2019 PR Letter by Tarnopolsky--Kruchkov--Vishwanath. The mathematics behind this is an elementary blend of representation theory (of the Heisenberg group in characteristic three), Jacobi theta functions and spectral instability
of non-self-adjoint operators (involving Hörmander's bracket condition
in a very simple setting). Recent mathematical progress also includes
the proof of existence of generalized magic angles and computer assisted proofs of existence of real ones (Luskin--Watson, 2021). The results will be illustrated by colourful numerics which suggest many open problems (joint work with S Becker, M Embree and J Wittsten,
2020).

This is an in-person presentation. Note the new date.