Markus Land: L-theory of rings via higher categories

An online lecture course by the University of Münster in L-theory of rings.

We will introduce Witt groups and various flavours of L-groups and discuss some examples. We will then discuss a process called algebraic surgery. This process permits, under suitable assumptions, to simplify representatives in L-groups, and we will touch on two flavours (surgery from below and surgery from above). We will indicate how these can be used to show that various comparison maps between different L-theories are isomorphisms (in suitable ranges). Then we will go on and discuss three methods that allow for more calculations: Localisation sequences, a dévissage theorem, and an arithmetic fracture square. Using those, we will calculate the L-groups of Dedekind rings whose fraction field is a global field.

Yonatan Harpaz: New perspectives in hermitian K-theory

An online lecture course by the University of Münster in K-theory of forms.

In this lecture series we will describe an approach to hermitian K-theory which sheds some new light on classical Grothendieck-Witt groups of rings, especially in the domain where 2 is not assumed to be invertible. Our setup is higher categorical in nature, and is based on the concept of a Poincaré ∞-category, first suggested by Lurie. We will explain how classical examples of interest can be encoded in this setup, and how to define the principal invariants of interest, consisting of the Grothendieck-Witt spectrum and L-theory spectrum, within it. We will then describe our main abstract results, including additivity, localization and universality statements for these invariants and their relation to each other and to algebraic K-theory via the fundamental fibre sequence.

Calum Ross: Topology in Physics – Some Recent Applications

An LMS online lecture course in solitons.

The lectures will highlight some recent work on solvable models of topological solitons. The first involves generalisations of the U(1) Abelian-Higgs model whose integrability is intimately related to the geometry of constant curvature Riemann surfaces. The second piece of work is a study of magnetic skyrmions in chiral magnets. Recently a family of soluble models for magnetic skyrmions in chiral magnets was introduced. The energy functional for these models is bounded below by the topological charge, configurations which attain this bound solve first-order equations. The explicit solutions of these first-order equations are given in terms of arbitrary holomorphic functions. Finally I will explain how this model can be interpreted as a gauged non-linear sigma model.

Lecture 1: A primer on solitons. I will introduce the concept of a topological soliton through two prototypical examples, the φ4 and Sine-Gordon models in 1+1 dimensions. Next, we will meet Derrick's theorem and learn why solitons are hard to construct in higher dimensions. Finally, we will meet some examples of higher-dimensional models possessing soliton solutions.

Lecture 2: Solitons in chiral magnets. We will meet a specific model of 2-dimensional chiral magnetic systems which admits soliton solutions. For a special potential term exact, degree 1, skyrmion solutions can be constructed. This leads up to meeting a critically coupled version of the model where there is a whole zoo of analyitic skyrmion solutions.