EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: On the volume of the moduli space of flat connections on a non-orientable 2-manifold
Speaker: Professor Nan-Kuo Ho
Speaker Info: The Fields Institute (Canada) and National Cheng-Kung University (Taiwan)
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:

In "On quantum gauge theories in two dimensions" Witten defined and computed a volume on the moduli space of gauge equivalence classes of flat connections on a 2-manifold, using Reidemeister torsion. Witten proved that this volume is equal to the symplectic volume on the moduli space. However, when the 2-manifold is not orientable, the moduli space does not have a symplectic form, so the interpretation of this volume has been unclear. We computed the Riemannian volume of the moduli space of flat connections on a nonorientable 2-manifold, for a natural class of metrics, and compared our volume formula with Witten's volume formula.

This is a joint work with Lisa Jeffrey.