Mathematical Physics in Zurich

Useful links

• Talks in Mathematical Physics (internal research seminar; joint between ETH Zurich & University of Zurich)

• SwissMAP

• Advanced Topics in Field Theory (internal group seminar at the University of Zurich)

• Zurich Colloquium in Mathematics

Internal Research Seminar: Advanced Topics in Field Theory

Currently, the seminar follows the following topic:

• Fall 2025: Research Presentations, each of the participants gives a presentation to their research.

In the past we have covered the following topics in the seminar:

• Spring 2025: no seminar

• Falls 2024: no seminar

• Spring 2024: no seminar

• Fall 2023: no seminar

• Spring 2023: Hypoelliptic Laplacian and orbital Integrals, reading seminar on the book of Jean-Michel Bismut. We have also used a survey of Bismut, which can be found here.

• Fall 2022: Research Presentations, each of the participants gives a presentation to their research.

• Spring 2022: no seminar

• Fall 2021: no seminar

• Spring 2021: no seminar

• Fall 2020: Journal Club,  The notion of equivalence in the BV-BFV formalism and examples from Gravity, Ruelle zeta function from field theory,  Stratified algebra, Elliptic stable envelopes, Instanton Floer Homology, Non-commutative derived Poisson reduction, Factorization algebras on manifolds with boundary, Some elements of dynamical representation theory.

• Spring 2020: Loop Quantum Gravity, 3D gravity, Ponzano-Regge model, 3D TQFTs from spherical fusion categories (Turaev-Viro model), ADM formalism for 4D Einstein-Hilbert gravity, Quantization: Wheeler-DeWitt equation, 4D Palatini action, Plebanski and MacDowell-Mansouri actions, Ooguri and Crane-Yetter state sum, Quantization: Ashtekar-Lewandowski measure, spin networks, Barrett-Crane model, EPRL model. 

• Fall 2019:  no seminar. 

• Spring 2019: Perturbative Algebraic Quantum Field Theory, following the book of Kasia Rejzner with the same title.

• Fall 2018: Field Theory, In particular: Introduction to quantum field theories according to Kevin Costello, Renormalization, Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism, Factorization algebras, L∞-spaces, Topological quantum mechanics, B-model, Riemannian metrics and Laplacians for generalized smooth distributions, Fedosov quantization, One-dimensional AKSZ theories. 

• Spring 2018: Reading Course,  on the paper of Dan Freed and Michael Hopkins called Reflection positivity and invertible topological phases, arXiv:1604.06527 

• Fall 2017: Research Presentations, each of the participants gave a presentation to their research.