Strings & Geometry 2025

7 Apr 2025, 08:00 → 10 Apr 2025, 18:00 Europe/Rome

Budinich Lecture Hall (ICTP, Leonardo da Vinci Building) (IGAP/ICTP - Trieste (ITALY))

Andrés Collinucci (ULB - Brussels) (ULB - Brussels), Raffaele Savelli (University of Rome "Tor Vergata") (University of Rome "Tor Vergata"), Roberto Valandro (University of Trieste - local organizer) (University of Trieste)

The Strings and Geometry conference is a continuation of the series of conferences "Physics and Geometry of F-theory", established in 2012.

After it was renamed in 2019, it brings together leading international experts working more broadly at the interface of string theory and mathematics.

Topics of the 2025 edition include: Mathematical aspects of string compactifications, geometric engineering of field theories, symmetries in their various incarnations, as well as geometrical aspects of the swampland program.

Speakers include:

Bobby Acharya (ICTP)

Federico Bonetti (Murcia)

Antoine Bourget (Saclay)

Pierrick Bousseau (UGeorgia)

Andreas Braun (Durham)

Ilka Brunner (LMU Munich)

Cyril Closset (Birmingham)

Markus Dierigl (CERN)

Simone Giacomelli (Milano Bicocca)

Alba Grassi (CERN & UGeneva)

Thomas Grimm (Utrecht)

Amihay Hanany (Imperial College)

Jonathan Heckman (UPenn)

Johanna Knapp (Melbourne)

Craig Lawrie (DESY)

Guglielmo Lockhart (Bonn)

Salvo Mancani (Padova)

Fernando Marchesano (IFT Madrid)

Sara Pasquetti (Milano Bicocca)

Steven Rayan (USask)

Andrea Sangiovanni (Uppsala)

Washington Taylor (MIT)

Cumrun Vafa (Harvard)

Damian van de Heisteeg (Harvard)

Max Wiesner (Hamburg)

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, 7 April

09:00 → 09:25 Registration

09:25 → 09:30 Opening Remarks

09:30 → 11:00 Geometric Aspects of the Swampland

Speaker: Fernando Marchesano

11:00 → 11:30 Coffee

11:30 → 12:05 Ricci flat Manifolds and Confinement in String Theory

Speaker: Bobby Acharya

12:05 → 12:40 Hyperbolic Band Theory, Higgs Bundles, and Supersymmetric Field Theory

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.

Speaker: Steven Rayan

12:40 → 14:30 Lunch

14:30 → 15:05 Geometric Approach to Symmetries at Finite Temperature

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.

Speaker: Jonathan Heckman

15:05 → 15:40 G2 mirror symmetry

Speaker: Andreas Braun

15:40 → 16:10 Coffee

16:10 → 16:45 6d on ALE

Speaker: Guglielmo Lockhart

16:45 → 17:20 Worldsheet boundary states and extended operators in field theory

Speaker: Salvatore Mancani

19:00 → 21:00 Welcome Dinner

Tuesday, 8 April

09:30 → 11:00 TBA

Speaker: Amihay Hanany

11:00 → 11:30 Coffee

11:30 → 12:05 Defects and Phases of Abelian GLSM

Speaker: Ilka Brunner

12:05 → 12:40 Exotic geometries from non-abelian GLSMs

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.

Speaker: Johanna Knapp

12:40 → 14:30 Lunch

14:30 → 15:05 Discrete Gauging of 6d SCFTs and Wreathed 3d N=4 Quivers

Speaker: Craig Lawrie

15:05 → 15:40 S-folds and 4d N=2 SCFTs

Speaker: Simone Giacomelli

15:40 → 16:10 Coffee

16:10 → 16:45 Exploring Utopia

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.

Speaker: Markus Dierigl

16:45 → 17:20 SymTFTs and Non-Invertible Symmetries of 6d (2,0) SCFTs from M-theory

Speaker: Federico Bonetti

Wednesday, 9 April

09:30 → 11:00 Topological Strings and Spectral Theory: A Non-Perturbative Approach

Speaker: Alba Grassi

11:00 → 11:30 Coffee

11:30 → 12:05 Geometric vs Non-Geometric Landscape

Speaker: Cumrun Vafa

12:05 → 12:40 BPS quivers, Galois covers and dualities in supersymmetric quantum mechanics

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.

Speaker: Cyril Closset

12:40 → 14:30 Lunch

14:30 → 15:05 Complexity bounds and volume growths in effective field theories

Speaker: Thomas Grimm

15:05 → 15:40 Emergent Strings in type IIb limits of Type IIB String Theory

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.

Speaker: Max Wiesner

15:40 → 16:10 Coffee

16:10 → 16:45 Planar abelian mirror duals of 3d N=2 CS quiver theories

Speaker: Sara Pasquetti

16:45 → 17:20 Finiteness and the Emergence of Dualities

Speaker: Damian van de Heisteeg

Thursday, 10 April

09:15 → 10:45 Non-toric brane webs, Calabi-Yau 3-folds, and 5d SCFTs

Speaker: Pierrick Bousseau

10:45 → 11:15 Coffee

11:15 → 11:50 Classification of Minimal Coulomb Branches

Speaker: Antoine Bourget

11:50 → 12:25 On the classification of 5d conformal matter SCFTs

Speaker: Andrea Sangiovanni

12:25 → 13:00 New Results on Fibers and Bases of Elliptic Calabi-Yaus for F-Theory

Speaker: Washington Taylor

13:00 → 13:05 Concluding Remarks