UNIVERSE+ Online Seminars (33/36)

by Mikhail Kapranov (Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe)

Wednesday 11 Nov 2026, 16:00 → 17:00 Europe/Berlin

This is the Online Seminar Series of the ERC Synergy Grant UNIVERSE+ 

• November 11, 4:00pm: Mikhail Kapranov

           "Landau singlarities and convex geometry"

 

Abstract:
A classic result of Minkowski (1895) says that any finite collection of vectors summing to 0 can be realized as the weighted normals to the faces of a unique, up to translations, convex polytope. This may have a significance for scattering theory, if we think of the vectors as the momenta of the incoming and outgoing particles. A polyhedral subdivision of the polytope given by the Minkowski problem gives a "scattering diagram", i.e., a graph with edges labelled by momenta satisfying momentum conservation at each vertex. We can then interpret the 1959 paper of Landau that introduced Landau singularities, to deduce that a regular subdivision (admitting a strictly convex PL-function) produces a singularity of an appropriate Feynman integral corresponding to the dual graph of the subdivision. This gives an interesting class of "polyhedral" Landau singularities. 

 

 

Your registration is valid for the entire UNIVERSE+ Seminar Series, so there is no need to register individually for each session.

This activity is part of the ERC Synergy Grant UNIVERSE+ www.positive-geometry.com, funded by the European Union (ERC, UNIVERSE PLUS, 101118787). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.