The seventy-fifth meeting of the North British Mathematical Physics Seminar will be held on Saturday 22nd November 2025 in Durham, in Room MCS0001 (the Scott Logic lecture theatre) in the Department of Mathematical Sciences. Tea/Coffee and Lunch will be in NE3, the area in the North East of the top floor. To get there go up the main stairs to the top floor then walk straight ahead to the end before turning right. Near NE3 there are glass doors which may be locked but any local participant can open them. See Google Maps for the location of the department. These people have signed up to attend the meeting.
Abstract TBA
The Swampland program aims to identify universal properties of EFTs that can be embedded consistently in a theory of quantum gravity. One important property is the absence of (generalised) global symmetries, and usually this follows from (and implies) having a complete spectrum of gauge charges. In this talk, I will discuss the global symmetries of disconnected gauge theories from a Swampland perspective, using O(2) gauge theory as a guiding example. I will show how it initially appears that one can break all global symmetries without completing the spectrum, and how this issue is circumvented using anomaly inflow on the charged operators. Based on WIP with Felix Christensen, Iñaki García Etxebarria, and Tom Rudelius.
Abstract TBA
Three-point amplitudes between massive higher-spin fields and a graviton have been shown to reproduce the multipolar expansion of the Kerr black hole in 4D. The amplitudes are most easily expressed in a massive spinor-helicity basis and the Kerr expansion is matched in the classical limit. In this talk I will describe how the connection between massive higher-spin amplitudes and black holes is extended to 5D, along with the new features that show up compared to four dimensions.
We study Yang–Mills theory at null infinity from a geometric perspective, where the Stueckelberg fields that enlarge the phase space and implement large gauge transformations arise naturally from reductions/extensions of the underlying principal bundle’s structure group. We explicitly construct a boundary action governing the dynamics of these fields, allowing for a first-principles derivation of asymptotic charges and their algebra. Our framework naturally exhibits loop-group structures acting on the boundary fields, and gives a unified perspective on the interplay between bundle geometry, boundary actions, and the dynamics of soft modes.
Train information can be obtained here.
For directions to the Department of Mathematical Sciences click here or here. The location is marked here on Google Maps.
Lunch, as well as morning and afternoon tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided free of charge. However, we need to know numbers in advance so please make sure you email Douglas Smith if you are coming to the meeting, by Wednesday 19th November if possible. Also register if you want to participate online and the link will be emailed to you.
Limited funds are available to help with travel expenses of participants with no other source of funding. We hope that this will encourage postgraduate students and postdocs to attend the meeting. Please email Stefano Negro in advance if you would like to apply for support and please book early to take advantage of the cheaper fares.