Title: Conformal blocks, strange duality and the moduli space of curves

Speaker: Swarnava Mukhopadhyay (University of Maryland, USA)

Date: 21 April 2017

Time: 10am

Venue: LH-1, Mathematics Department (via Skype)

Conformal blocks are refined invariants of tensor product of representations of a Lie algebra that give a special class of vector bundles on the moduli space of curves. In this talk, I will introduce conformal blocks and explore connections to questions in algebraic geometry and representation theory. I will also focus on some ``strange” dualities in representation theory and how they give equalities of divisor classes on the moduli space of curves.