March 16 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm Eastern Time (note that US clocks went forward on March 14th, and adjust to your local time accordingly!!!)

Nick Huggett, University of Illinois at Chicago / Center Senior Visiting Fellow

Missing the Point in Non-Commutative Field Theory

This will be an online lecture held via Zoom, and pre-registration is required.  Please register here: https://pitt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8cIVYSN0RfywEh4uJOp0MA

ABSTRACT:  A non-commutative field theory (for scalar fields in this talk) introduces a fundamental area, as the measure of non-commutation (analogous to Planck’s constant), but does it signify a minimum area? Drawing on work with Fedele Lizzi (Napoli) and Tushar Menon (Cambridge) I will explain a sense in which this is correct, implying that points are ‘missing’. This situation raises several questions: how should the theory then be understood? Can its algebraic formulation be interpreted as describing the basic degrees of freedom of a world? And if so, how do we understand the ‘emergence’ of continuous, classical spacetime physics?