Learning Workshop on BPS States and 3-Manifolds

The main scientific theme of the workshop is counting BPS states in physical systems associated to 3-manifolds or links, and interpretation of these counts as old or new topological invariants.

Although the ideas behind such relations appeared already in the late 90s, the recent years have seen some dramatic new developments. The goal of this learning workshop is to bring together physicists and mathematicians who are experts in the subject and also those who would like to enter the field. In particular, the talks will be given both by senior scientists and junior ones, including PhD students who only recently began working on the subject. The talks will be supplemented by dedicated discussion sessions where experts can answer questions that will be submitted by participants to the moderator in advance, or asked directly during the session.

Topics: "Z-hat" and F_K invariants counting BPS states in 6d superconformal field theory compactified on 3- manifolds, and their relation to known invariants of 3-manifolds and links -- Knots-quivers correspondence and its generalization to knot complements -- Properties of generating functions counting BPS states, including: modularity, relation to characters of (logarithmic) Vertex Operator Algebras, GW/DT invariants