Physics and Astronomy Calendar

Cold dense quark matter is a superfluid, but not quite the
familiar one we learned about in textbooks. Instead, it is a
"topologically-enriched" superfluid. I'll explain how to derive a
local effective action for this gapless phase of matter, which
involves coupling the superfluid to a topological quantum field theory
(TQFT). Along the way we'll talk about continuum "BF" actions for
four-dimensional discrete gauge theories, as well certain peculiar
five-dimensional cousins of these TQFTs relevant for our superfluids.
This talk is a more technical follow-up to a talk from two weeks ago,
but will be aimed to be followable by people who didn't attend the
first talk.