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"What is life?" annual lecture 2024

The annual "What is life?" lecture, "Anatomy of Big Algebras", will be given by Prof. Tamás Hausel of ISTA on Tuesday November 5th at 5:30pm in the Physics Large Lecture theatre in the Fitzgerald Building, TCD. The talk is organised by the school of mathematics, TCD and the Austrian Embassy.

As this is a public talk we ask that people reserve seats via eventbrite.

Abstract: Starting with Schrödinger’s critique of the difficulty of visualising Heisenberg’s matrix quantum physics we will discuss the notion of non-commutative matrices and its use in particle physics via Gell-Mann’s eightfold way describing heavy particles in terms of quarks. Then I will use this background to motivate my recent work on big algebras - commutative avatars of non-commutative matrix representations - and show some visualisation of them to highlight their complex anatomy, shedding some new light on the quantum numbers of the heavy particles in the baryon octet and decuplet.

Poster for public lecture