Pure Mathematics Student Seminar
This seminar, run by the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne, is for maths students of all walks and stages of life: undergraduates, graduates, provers, poets, learners, teachers, thinkers and inspirers.
2024 Semester 1
Organisers
Mailing list
To subscribe to our mailing list, contact Davood Nejaty, or visit the link below (University of Melbourne login required):
https://lists.unimelb.edu.au/info/pure-maths-student-seminar
Upcoming talks
Friday 19 April
2:15 - 3:15pm, Peter Hall 162
Max Treutlein
Simplicial sets and the realisation of a category
In this talk I will give a small introduction to the idea of a simplicial set (with some pictures) and how they give a combinatorial way of constructing particularly nice topological spaces. In particular I will give one example of how this can be used to construct a space out of a category, whose homotopy type can be understood through purely categorical methods. This is a central tool in the construction of Algebraic K-Theory but can also be used to construct other nice spaces such as the Eilenberg MacLane spaces.
Friday 3 May
2:15 - 3:15pm, Peter Hall 162
Oliver Li
Friday 10 May
2:15 - 3:15pm, Peter Hall 162
Ben Pagliaro
Past talks
Friday 12 April
2:15 - 3:15pm, Peter Hall 162
Grace Yuan
Jones polynomial and Khovanov homology
In this talk I will introduce a classical knot invariant called Jones polynomial and its categorification, Khovanov homology. I will do some examples and computations to illustrate.
Friday 22 March
3:15 - 4:15pm, Peter Hall 162
Gypsy Akhyar
What is... a parking function?
A big part of combinatorics is taking some big and scary-looking maths and creating a pretty picture that contains all that same maths. For my talk, parking functions are the pretty picture and the big scary maths comes from quotient-ing out a 2n-dimensional polynomial ring in two variables by the ideal generated by the S_n invariant polynomials via the diagonal action. For a little peek into this particular world of algebraic combinatorics, come to the talk! (undergraduates should be able to understand - the maths isn't too scary, I promise!).
Friday 15 March
3:15 - 4:15 pm, Peter Hall 162
Yuhan Gai
Generalized symmetries in the transverse field Ising model
I will illustrate how categorical description of symmetry appears from "gauging a global symmetry" in the transverse field Ising model, which is one of the simplest spin chain models with a global Z_2 symmetry. We will see how "topological defects" show up by gauging the symmetry and how they combine with each other to form a fusion category.