Ramanujan Auditorium

Dispersion Relations: From Classical Optics to String Theory

N. D. Hari Dass

Retd. Senior Professor, IMSc

I shall give a pedagogical narration of how a simple, but  intriguing relation about colours in classical optics impacted the most modern developments in physics, even to the point of anticipating String Theory.
The strong thread that held these pearls of scientific creativity was the powerful
mathematical idea of analyticity, which in this physical context turned out, rather surprisingly,  to be a consequence of the deeply cherished physical principle of Causality.
The talk will be at a level accessible to a wide audience.