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Seiberg-Witten equations in all dimensions
Joel FIne (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Location: Hill 705 and on Zoom
Date & time: Tuesday, 29 April 2025 at 11:00AM - 12:00PM
Abstract: I will describe a generalisation of the Seiberg-Witten equations to a Spin-c manifold of any dimension. The equations are for a U(1) connection A and spinor phi and also an odd-degree differential form b (of inhomogeneous degree). Clifford action of the form is used to perturb the Dirac operator D_A. The first equation says that (D_A+b)(phi)=0. The second equation involves the Weitzenböck remainder for D_A+b, setting it equal to q(phi), where q(phi) is the same quadratic term which appears in the usual Seiberg-Witten equations. This system is elliptic modulo gauge in dimensions congruent to 0,1 or 3 mod 4. In dimensions congruent to 2 mod 4 one needs to take two copies of the system, coupled via b. If time permits, I will also describe a variant of these equations which make sense on manifolds with a Spin(7) structure. The most important difference with the familiar 3 and 4 dimensional stories is that compactness of the space of solutions is, for now at least, unclear. This is joint work with Partha Ghosh and, in the Spin(7) setting, Ragini Singhal.