The idea of this seminar is to learn the background needed to understand recent work on Coulomb branches and their applications in representation theory. I want most talks to be given by graduate students/postdocs in the seminar, but will probably take a few of the trickier ones myself. Unfortunately, due to Covid, the plan is for talks to be given over Zoom from different locations, though I encourage participants who feel safe doing so to watch in groups; I hope to participate in person with students/postdocs who are in Waterloo.

My preliminary plan is to meet at 10:30-12 Eastern time on Fridays, but we will record talks to share with people signed up for the seminar.

If you want to join the email list, please email me: [email protected]

I'd appreciate if you included a few words on your background (i.e. knowledge of any of the topics listed below) and interests. Let me know if you are interested in giving a talk (either a specific one or just in general).

I've started some notes that I hope we can gradually flesh out into a proper document. Edits, comments and questions in the document are encouraged.

Here is a playlist of the videos.

Week 0 (Sept. 10): logistics and intro [Ben Webster] Zoom recording notes from talk

Week 1 (Sept. 17): Equivariant cohomology for reductive groups [Aiden Sutter] slides from talk [no recording due to technical mishap]

Week 2 (Sept. 24): Convolution in Borel-Moore homology [Ilia Nekrasov] Zoom recording notes from talk

Week 3 (Oct. 8): flag varieties and nilHecke algebras [Richard Derryberry] Zoom recording notes from talk

Week 4 (Oct. 15): Springer theory and KLR algebras from quiver varieties [Ben Webster] Zoom recording notes from talk

Week 5 (Oct. 22): Affine Grassmannians, affine flag varieties and their homology [Cailan Li] Zoom recording notes from talk

Week 6 (Oct. 29): Coulomb branches from geometry I [Yehao Zhou] Zoom recording notes

Week 7 (Nov. 12): Coulomb branches from geometry II [Yehao Zhou] Zoom recording notes

Week 8 (Nov. 19): Coulomb branches from algebra I [Ben Webster] Zoom recording notes

Week 9 (Nov. 26): Coulomb branches from algebra II [Ben Webster] Zoom recording notes

Week 10 (Dec. 3): Example: Cherednik algebra [Vasily Krylov] Zoom recording handwritten notes typed notes

Week 11 (Dec. 10): Representation theory of Coulomb branches [Ben Webster] Zoom recording handwritten notes