Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall

Vertex operator algebras and integer partition identities of Rogers-Ramanujan type

Shashank Kanade

Rutgers University

Integer partition identities of Rogers-Ramanujan type are related, in
various ways, to the representation theory of vertex operator
algebras. Recently, there have been many exciting advances in
this direction: new identities have been conjectured, certain
interesting (from the algebraic viewpoint) q-series-theoretic
``motivated proofs'' of already well-known identities have been found
and some new ways of ``categorifying'' such identities using the
representation theory of vertex operator algebras have been
explored. In this talk, I'll give an overview of some of these recent
developments. No previous knowledge of vertex operator algebras will
be assumed.