W-Algebras

Overview: Our goal is to bring together postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty to participate in a week-long intensive exploration of W-algebras and related geometric and representation theoretic topics.  

 

The workshop will be led by Tomoyuki Arakawa and Anne Moreau, renown experts in this area.  The format is roughly "Talbot Style".  This means that the mentors and organisers will design a series of 15-20 lectures.  Several of these lectures will be given by the mentors and other experts in attendance, but the majority of talks will be given by the participants.  There will also be problem sessions and time for casual discussion among the participants. 

 

Agenda: 

• Day 1: Overview of theory and the goals of the workshop.  Introduction to affine Lie algebras, and their representations.
• Day 2: Vertex algebras and Zhu functors, Zhu's C2 algebra and the canonical filtration.
• Days 3/4: BRST cohomology, quantum Hamiltonian reduction, finite and affine W-algebras
• Days 4/5: Current topics such as rationality of W-algebras, the geometry of jet schemes, and chiral differential operators on groups.