Geometric Aspects of the Swampland

• Fernando Marchesano

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

Ricci flat Manifolds and Confinement in String Theory

• Bobby Acharya

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

Hyperbolic Band Theory, Higgs Bundles, and Supersymmetric Field Theory

• Steven Rayan

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building) The advent of topological materials has brought with it new connections between physics and pure mathematics. In particular, algebraic topology has played a decisive role in the classification of these materials. In this talk, I will offer a brief look at an emerging chapter in this story in which complex algebraic geometry — in particular, of moduli spaces of unitary and nonunitary data associated with complex curves — is used to anticipate new forms of synthetic quantum matter, supported for example on 2-dimensional hyperbolic lattices. In the process, I will explain my recent joint works with J. Maciejko, E. Kienzle, and Á. Nagy respectively that lay the groundwork for, and subsequently probe, an electronic band theory for such matter. I will connect this discussion to Higgs bundles, supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory, and Nakajima quiver varieties.

Geometric Approach to Symmetries at Finite Temperature

• Jonathan Heckman

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building) Symmetry operators of quantum field theories (QFTs) engineered via stringy backgrounds arise from "branes wrapped at infinity" which topologically link with operators and defects of the QFT. In this talk we show how to calculate the thermal expectation values of symmetry operators in holographic CFTs using the geometry of the gravity dual. Expectation values of zero-form symmetry operators in the CFT are related to branes wrapped on volume minimizing cycles in the bulk, namely the Euclidean continuation of a black hole horizon. We illustrate with a few examples, including duality / triality defects as engineered by bound states of [p,q] 7-branes, and R-symmetries as engineered by metric isometries.

G2 mirror symmetry

• Andreas Braun

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

6d on ALE

• Guglielmo Lockhart

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

Worldsheet boundary states and extended operators in field theory

• Salvatore Mancani

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

Magnetic Quivers & Phase Diagrams

• Amihay Hanany

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

Defects and Phases of Abelian GLSM

• Ilka Brunner

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

Exotic geometries from non-abelian GLSMs

• Johanna Knapp

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building) Non-abelian gauged linear sigma models (GLSMs) have proven to be a powerful tool to analyse Calabi-Yaus and their moduli spaces beyond the framework of toric geometry. In this talk we analyse a particular non-abelian one-parameter GLSM associated to a Calabi-Yau whose Kahler moduli space has two points of maximal unipotent monodromy, indicating the presence of two geometries. At large volume one finds a fairly simple complete intersection in a free quotient of a toric variety, while the small volume region appears to be non-geometric and has some peculiar features like a Coulomb branch. Using techniques from topological string theory and mirror symmetry we collect evidence that the second Calabi-Yau should be a non-commutative resolution of a singular geometry as recently discussed by Katz-Klemm-Schimannek-Sharpe. This is work in collaboration with Joseph McGovern.

Discrete Gauging of 6d SCFTs and Wreathed 3d N=4 Quivers

• Craig Lawrie

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

S-folds and 4d N=2 SCFTs

• Simone Giacomelli

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

Exploring Utopia

• Markus Dierigl

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building) In this talk we will explore different topological charges of supergravity theories supported by a non-trivial U-duality bundle. In case these charges would be conserved, they would lead to global symmetries, which we believe to be absent in any consistent theory of quantum gravity. With the UV completions of string and M-theory at hand, we explore which kind of UV objects are necessary to break all global symmetries in the IR supergravity theory. This leads to interesting string backgrounds including higher-dimensional superconformal field theories, twisted compactifications, and non-geometric defects.

SymTFTs and Non-Invertible Symmetries of 6d (2,0) SCFTs from M-theory

• Federico Bonetti

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

Topological Strings and Spectral Theory: A Non-Perturbative Approach

• Alba Grassi

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

Geometric vs Non-Geometric Landscape

• Cumrun Vafa

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

BPS quivers, Galois covers and dualities in supersymmetric quantum mechanics

• Cyril Closset

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building) I will present some new results about supersymmetric quantum mechanics (SQM) related to the study of half-BPS states of 4d N=2 SQFTs, including 5d SCFT on a circle, as well as about SQM related to vortex lines in 3d N=2 gauge theories. On the one hand, I will revisit the so-called Galois cover of 1d N=4 SQM quivers, which allow us to relate the BPS spectra of very different theories in non-trivial ways. On the other hand, I will present new observations about Seiberg-like dualities in 1d N=2 SQM with unitary gauge groups. Many of these observations have (or should have) an interpretation in terms of branes at singularities.

Complexity bounds and volume growths in effective field theories

• Thomas Grimm

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

Emergent Strings in type IIb limits of Type IIB String Theory

• Max Wiesner

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building) In this talk, I will discuss the realization of the Emergent String Conjecture in the vector multiplet moduli space of Type IIB compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds. Based on the classification of infinite distance limits in the complex structure moduli space of Calabi-Yau threefolds in terms of limiting mixed Hodge structures, such limits are expected to correspond to so-called type II_b limits for which b<h^{2,1} an integer. However, neither a tower of light BPS states nor a tensionless, critical string has been so far identified for general such limits. For the special class of type II_b limits realized as Tyurin degenerations of CY threefolds, I will use the additional information encoded in the geometry of the degenerate threefold to establish the existence of a tower of light BPS states and study the worldsheet theory on a geometric string solution which becomes tensionless at the same rate as the tower of BPS states in the type II_b limit. As a result, I will show that this tensionless string corresponds to a critical heterotic string with a perturbative gauge group of rank 2+b — consistent with the Emergent String Conjecture. Finally, by reversing the logic, I will discuss how the Emergent String Conjecture yields a new constraint on the type II_b limiting Hodge structures that can have a geometric realization on Calabi-Yau threefolds. This talk is based on joint work with Björn Friedrich, Jeroen Monnee, and Timo Weigand.

Planar abelian mirror duals of 3d N=2 CS quiver theories

• Sara Pasquetti

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

Finiteness and the Emergence of Dualities

• Damian van de Heisteeg

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

Non-toric brane webs, Calabi-Yau 3-folds, and 5d SCFTs

• Pierrick Bousseau

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

Classification of Minimal Coulomb Branches

• Antoine Bourget

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

On the classification of 5d conformal matter SCFTs

• Andrea Sangiovanni

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)

New Results on Fibers and Bases of Elliptic Calabi-Yaus for F-Theory

• Washington Taylor

Room: Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building)