Basic Notions Seminar talk on November 15, 2002

Speaker:   Jim Isenberg (University of Oregon)

Title:   What Yang-Mills Theory is all About

Abstract: 
    Yang-Mills theory is
    1) A straightforward generalization of Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, describing interactions among particles with "multi-color " and "multi-flavor" charge instead of the standard (R-valued) charge.
    2) A very useful tool for classifying four and three dimensional manifolds via their moduli space of self-dual connections
    3) The foundation for the current standard model for all high energy interactions in physics.
    4) A geometrically grounded nonlinear wave-type system of partial differential equations.
    5)The critical values for the standard curvature norm on principal G-bundles over Riemannian and Lorentzian manifolds.

    This talk is an elementary introduction to the nature of Yang-Mills theory and its various manifestations, as listed above.