Prairie Mathematics Colloquium: Steve Rayan

The advent of topological materials, a form of physical matter with unusual but useful properties, has brought with it unexpected new connections between pure mathematics on the one side and physics, chemistry, and material science on the other side. As the name suggests, topology has played a significant role in understanding and classifying these materials. In this talk, I will offer a brief look at a vast extension to this story, arising from my work as a pure mathematician in collaboration with a number of individuals from the physical sciences over the last three years. This work sees geometry — in particular, the complex algebraic geometry of Riemann surfaces and moduli spaces associated to them — being used to anticipate new models of quantum matter. There will be lots of pictures.