Events

Date: 15 October 2026   Time: 14:00 - 15:00

Location: Room 610 G. O Jones Building

Title:

Mixed Schur–Weyl Duality and Topological Expansions for 2D Gauge Theory revisited

Abstract:

This talk explores the role of Schur–Weyl duality between unitary and symmetric groups in random matrix theory and the large-N limits of lattice gauge theories, from a combinatorial perspective.

I shall present a combinatorial approach based on a variant of Schur–Weyl duality for mixed tensors, recently used to establish asymptotic expansions of the partition function and convergence of Wilson loops in two-dimensional Yang–Mills theory. I will revisit the work of Gross and Taylor, "2D QCD Is a String Theory," sketch an alternative proof of a formula due to Kimura and Ramgoolam, and discuss applications to surface expansions of Wilson loops and the determination of the master field on closed orientable surfaces.

This talk is based on the arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.1137.