U.S.-France Seminar on Infinite - Dimensional Symmetries in Physics and Mathematics: Paris, France, June 1989

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This award will support U.S. participation in a U.S.-French seminar on the topic of infinite-dimensional symmetries in physics and mathematics, to be held in Paris, France in June 1989. The U.S. organizer is Dr. I. M. Singer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The French counterpart is Professor J. P. Bourguignon, Centre de Mathematiques, Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau. The seminar will provide the opportunity for exchange between U.S. and French mathematicians and physicists on a number of topics of critical interest in contemporary mathematics and theoretical physics. Among the subjects for discussion are: 1) The representations of the Virasoro algebra, the super Virasoro algebra, and affine Lie algebras; their BRST cohomology; extensions to arbitrary Riemann surfaces; non-linear generalizations of the conformal and superconformal algebras. 2) The classification of conformally invariant field theories; integrable systems, quantum groups. 3) Supermoduli spaces, superintegration, supercompactifications, and universal moduli spaces; multi-loop string diagrams. 4) The supercharge operator, its index, and relation to elliptic homology. 5) Superstring theories, sigma-models, coset spaces, attempts to resum the perturbation series; fine tuning problems and particle phenomenology, Planck-length physics. New string theories based on interacting world-sheet dynamics.