Speaker: Prof. Eric Rowell (Texas A&M University)

Venue: Classroom Quan 9

Time: 10-11AM of August 21 2-3PM of August 27, August 29, September 2, September 4, September 6

Talk 1:Modular Categories: Towards Classification
In this talk I will introduce modular categories and describe applications to topological quantum computing. I will then outline our recent breakthrough with Zhenghan Wang, Paul Bruillard and Siu-Hung Ng proving the10 year old rank-finiteness conjecture.

Talk 2: Braided Fusion Categories: Localizing Braid Group Representations
From any braided fusion category we may construct interesting representations of the braid group, which play a central role in the topological model for quantum computation. I will describe a series of conjectures that connect the images of these representations to the categorical dimension of the category.