Informal Friday Seminar: Savage -- When bosons think they’re fermions (and vice versa)

This week’s IFS speaker is Alistair Savage, who will give two talks on the
boson-fermion correspondence.  

Time and Date: Friday, 28 April and May 5, 9-11am 

Location: Carslaw 830 and online 

Zoom link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/84792295528 

Title: When bosons think they’re fermions (and vice versa) 

Abstract: The boson-fermion correspondence, which plays an important role in
physics, is a precise relationship between a representation of an infinite rank
Heisenberg algebra and a representation of an infinite rank Clifford algebra.  Starting
from only some basic knowledge of the ring of symmetric functions, will will explain
this correspondence.  We will begin by describing bosonic and fermionic Fock spaces,
which are irreducible representations of the Heisenberg and Clifford algebras,
respectively.  Then we will discuss the procedures of fermionization and bosonization,
which are the two halves of the boson-fermion correspondence.  

Reminder: This semester we will cover several topics in the IFS, spending around two
weeks with every speaker.  As usual, the goal of the seminar is to give the flavour of
the subject, not all the nitty gritty details.  Questions and sidebars are encouraged,
and we’ll emphasise examples, intuition, tools and historical diversions.  The talks
are intended to be conversational, so come ready to engage! The website remains in the
same place: https://sites.google.com/view/ifssydney/home