Travis SCRIMSHAW
Associate Professor
Turning fine mathematics into silly diagrams
Department of Mathematics, Mathematics
Theme | Combinatorial description of representation theory and Schubert calculus |
Field | Combinatorial representation theory |
Keyword | Crystal basis, Yang-Baxter equation, Schubert calculus |
Introduction of Research
Representation theory is about understanding symmetries of physical systems by studying algebraic objects using linear algebra. My research area seeks to describe representation theory in terms of combinatorial objects. Specifically, I focus on the representations of Kac-Moody Lie (super)algebras by using Kashiwara’s theory of crystals, which roughly describe what happens when the temperature in the system goes to zero. I have been applying these to Schubert calculus, which aims to understand the geometry of subspaces of a vector space, and exploring their connections to other areas, such as physics and probability theory.