Tue, December 3, 2019
1:50 pm - 2:50 pm
Math Building 105
Title: Algebraic questions from topological quantum computation
Speaker: Qing Zhang - Texas A&M University
Abstract: This talk will be devoted to some algebraic problems motivated by the quest for a topological quantum computer. After a review of the classical correspondence between anyon systems and modular tensor categories, I will describe recent progress in the theory of super-modular categories, a class of ribbon fusion categories modeling anyon systems in fermionic topological phases. I will also discuss a construction of braid group representations in iterated twisted tensor products of algebras. This construction unifies and generalizes several categorical constructions of braid group representations from finite groups.