Twistor theory

Programme theme

Twistor theory was originally proposed by Roger Penrose as a new geometric framework for physics that aims to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics. In the twistor approach, space--time is secondary with events being derived objects that correspond to compact holomorphic curves in a complex three--fold, the twistor space. The mathematics of twistor theory goes back to the 19th century Klein correspondence, but one of the unexpected spinoffs from twistor theory is its impact on modern pure mathematics, from differential geometry and representation theory to integrable systems. In the last few years the twistor methods re-emerged in several different fields (such as scattering amplitudes, twistor and ambitwistor strings, the Bridgeland approach to Calabi--Yau stability conditions, and conformal differential geometry) where clear open problems have been formulated. The aim of the programme is to bring together leading international researchers in the various sub-fields of twistor theory to overcome problems at the forefront of these fields.

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The Institute kindly requests that any papers published as a result of this programme’s activities are credited as such. Please acknowledge the support of the Institute in your paper using the following text:

The author(s) would like to thank the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge, for support and hospitality during the programme Twistor theory, where work on this paper was undertaken. This work was supported by EPSRC grant EP/Z000580/1.

Workshops

TWTW01

Twistors in Geometry & Physics

9 September 2024 to 13 September 2024

Seminars

Tuesday 3rd September 2024
10:00 to 11:00	Andreas Cap University of Vienna Partial G-structures and partial Cartan geometries	Room 2
14:30 to 15:30	Rod Gover University of Auckland Conformal aspects of submanifolds and curves	Room 2

Wednesday 4th September 2024
10:00 to 11:00	Roger Bielawski Leibniz Universität Hannover Twistor construction of Coulomb branches	Room 2
11:30 to 12:30	Timothy Moy University of Cambridge The twistor geometry of a family of Schrödinger equations	Room 2
14:30 to 15:30	Wojciech Krynski Polska Akademia Nauk Para-CR geometry and curves	Room 2

Thursday 5th September 2024
10:00 to 11:00	Jun-Muk Hwang Institute for Basic Science (2, 3, 5)-distributions and contact lines	Room 2
11:30 to 12:30	Jaehyun Hong Institute for Basic Science Generalized Tanaka prolongation and its applications	Room 2
14:30 to 15:30	Katja Sagerschnig Polish Academy of Sciences 4-dimensional conformal structures with G2-symmetric twistor distribution	Room 2

Friday 6th September 2024
10:00 to 11:00	Karin Melnick Université du Luxembourg; University of Maryland, College Park Conformal transformation groups of Lorentzian manifolds	Room 2
11:30 to 12:30	Arman Taghavi-Chabert Technical University of Lodz Perturbations of Fefferman spaces over (almost) CR manifolds	Room 2
14:30 to 15:30	Jan Slovak Masaryk University Curved translation principle in generalized conformal calculus	Room 2

Monday 16th September 2024
10:00 to 11:00	Lars Andersson Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications Stability of spacetimes with supersymmetric compactifications	Room 2
11:30 to 12:30	Lionel Mason University of Oxford Celestial symmetries charges at null infinity from twistor space	Room 2
14:30 to 15:30	Maciej Dunajski University of Cambridge Quasi-local mass, Kerr horizon, and causality	Room 2

Tuesday 17th September 2024
10:00 to 11:00	Joerg Frauendiener University of Otago Bridging the gap: towards a unified treatment of energy-momentum at infinity	Room 2
11:30 to 12:30	Bernardo Araneda Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationphysik Killing spinors and non-vacuum Chen-Teo metrics	Room 2
14:30 to 15:30	George Sparling University of Pittsburgh Metaphors for the twistor theory of the future.	Room 2
16:30 to 17:30	Mariem Magdy Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisboa Matching asymptotic charges using Friedrich's cylinder at spatial infinity	Room 2

Wednesday 18th September 2024
10:00 to 11:00	James Lucietti University of Edinburgh Intrinsic rigidity of extremal horizons and black hole uniqueness	Room 2
11:30 to 12:30	Alex Colling University of Cambridge Rigidity of the extremal Kerr-Newman horizon	Room 2
16:00 to 17:00	Jerzy Lewandowski University of Warsaw Charges and fluxes of gravitational field from the twistor connection.	Room 2

Wednesday 25th September 2024
09:00 to 10:00	Timothy Moy University of Cambridge Hyper-Lagrangians and Joyce structures	Room 2
10:00 to 11:00	Ian Strachan University of Glasgow Moyal quantized twistor spaces and dispersive integrable systems	Room 2
11:30 to 12:30	Ge Yi Hefei Universtity of Technology Dispersionless integrable equations and related integrable hierarchies	Room 2
14:30 to 15:30	Fabrizio Del Monte University of Sheffield Isomonodromic Deformations and Tau Functions	Room 2
16:00 to 17:00	Eugene Ferapontov Loughborough University Linearisable Abel equations and the Gurevich-Pitaevskii problem	Room 2

Thursday 26th September 2024
10:00 to 11:00	Thomas Mettler None / Other Title TBC	Room 2
11:30 to 12:30	Alex Colling University of Cambridge Quasi-Einstein structures on a surface	Room 2
14:30 to 15:30	Prim Plansangkate None / Other First integrals for solutions of the conformal Mercator equation	Room 2
16:00 to 17:00	Boris Kruglikov Universitetet i Tromsø Dispersionless integrablity and twistor theory above dimension 4.	Room 2

Organisers

Maciej Dunajski University of Cambridge
Lionel Mason University of Oxford
Katharina Neusser Masaryk University

Speakers

Lars Andersson Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications
Bernardo Araneda Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationphysik
Roger Bielawski Leibniz Universität Hannover
Andreas Cap University of Vienna
Alex Colling University of Cambridge
Fabrizio Del Monte University of Sheffield
Maciej Dunajski University of Cambridge
Eugene Ferapontov Loughborough University
Joerg Frauendiener University of Otago
Rod Gover University of Auckland
Jaehyun Hong Institute for Basic Science
Jun-Muk Hwang Institute for Basic Science
Boris Kruglikov Universitetet i Tromsø
Wojciech Krynski Polska Akademia Nauk
Jerzy Lewandowski University of Warsaw
James Lucietti University of Edinburgh
Mariem Magdy Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisboa
Lionel Mason University of Oxford
Karin Melnick Université du Luxembourg; University of Maryland, College Park
Thomas Mettler None / Other
Timothy Moy University of Cambridge
Prim Plansangkate None / Other
Katja Sagerschnig Polish Academy of Sciences
Jan Slovak Masaryk University
George Sparling University of Pittsburgh
Ian Strachan University of Glasgow
Arman Taghavi-Chabert Technical University of Lodz
Ge Yi Hefei Universtity of Technology

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Participants

Sergei Alexandrov Université de Montpellier
Lars Andersson Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications
Bernardo Araneda Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationphysik
Roger Bielawski Leibniz Universität Hannover
Roland Bittleston Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Aleksandra Borowka Jagiellonian University
Tom Bridgeland University of Sheffield
Peter Cameron University of Edinburgh
Andreas Cap University of Vienna
Alex Colling University of Cambridge
Fabrizio Del Monte University of Sheffield
Maciej Dunajski University of Cambridge
Joerg Frauendiener University of Otago
Niklas Garner University of Washington
Rod Gover University of Auckland
Alfredo Guevara Harvard University
Jaehyun Hong Institute for Basic Science
Jun-Muk Hwang Institute for Basic Science
Boris Kruglikov Universitetet i Tromsø
Wojciech Krynski Polska Akademia Nauk
Arthur Lipstein University of Durham
James Lucietti University of Edinburgh
Mariem Magdy Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisboa
Lionel Mason University of Oxford
Karin Melnick Université du Luxembourg; University of Maryland, College Park
Thomas Mettler None / Other
Ricardo Monteiro Queen Mary University of London
Timothy Moy University of Cambridge
Katharina Neusser Masaryk University
Roger Penrose University of Oxford
Prim Plansangkate None / Other
Katja Sagerschnig Polish Academy of Sciences
Atul Sharma Harvard University
Jan Slovak Masaryk University
George Sparling University of Pittsburgh
Ian Strachan University of Glasgow
Arman Taghavi-Chabert Technical University of Lodz
Paul Tod University of Oxford
Ge Yi Hefei Universtity of Technology
Lenka Zalabova Masaryk University