The public talk “Anatomy of big algebras” was delivered as the 2024 “What is Life?” annual lecture — formerly Schrödinger lecture — in the historic physics lecture theater at Trinity College Dublin organized jointly by the School of Mathematics and the Austrian embassy in Dublin.
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.
Slides of the talk. Photos and poster:
