Organizers
Zheyan Wan(万喆彦), BIMSA ✉ 🌐
Hank Chen (陳群皓), BIMSA ✉ 🌐
Wei Cui(崔嵬), BIMSA ✉ 🌐
Juven Wang (王浚帆), LIMS ✉ 🌐
Abstract
The study of anomalies lies at the intersection of high-energy physics, condensed matter physics, and mathematical physics. Anomalies provide essential tools for understanding the structure, consistency, and symmetry properties of quantum field theories, especially strongly coupled field theories and topological phases of matter. They appear as obstructions to gauging symmetries, as boundary signatures of higher-dimensional topological theories, and as organizing principles for phases of matter, dualities, and generalized global symmetries. Mathematically, anomalies are often encoded by topological quantum field theories, cobordism groups, generalized cohomology theories, and categorical structures, revealing deep connections between symmetry, topology, and quantum physics.
This conference will focus on recent developments in quantum field theory and anomalies. Topics will include ’t Hooft anomalies, generalized and higher-form symmetries, topological quantum field theories, conformal field theories, symmetry-protected and symmetry-enriched topological phases, cobordism and generalized cohomology methods, tensor categories, higher categories, and categorical approaches to quantum field theory. The conference aims to bring together researchers from mathematics and theoretical physics to present new results, discuss open problems, and explore emerging directions in the mathematical and physical study of anomalies. By creating a focused setting for interaction between different communities, the conference will help clarify common frameworks and stimulate new collaborations.
