The Joint Condensed Matter Seminar (JCMS) series is organised by KTH Royal Insitute of Technology, Nordita, and Stockholm University.
On Monday, September 19th, 2022 from 11 am to 12 am we will host a seminar by Chris Halcrow from KTH, Royal Institute of Technology.
Topological Solitons and Their Moduli Spaces
Topological solitons (kinks, lumps, skyrmions, vortices, monopoles, hopfions, instantons, … ) are localised, finite-energy solutions of nonlinear PDEs who owe their existence and stability to the topology of the system. They are studied by a wide variety of physicists. I’ll try to explain why high-energy and mathematical physicist study them, and what problems they are interested in. In particular, we’ll study the moduli space manifold (solution space) and use it to describe soliton dynamics. This example will motivate some further applications and problems. I’ll end by suggesting how these insights might shine a light on solitons in condensed matter. The talk is designed to be accessible, with no prerequisite knowledge required.