TITLE:Glueballs and the Ropelength of Knots

SPEAKER: Dr. Jason Parsley

TIME: Thursday April 15 at 3 PM

PLACE: George P. Williams, Jr. Lecture Hall, (Olin 101)

In this talk we will discuss the ropelength of a knot – that is, the amount of rope, of unit radius, that is required in order to tie that knot.  Ropelength is remarkably difficult to calculate analytically, but we present numerical results for prime knots and links. 

Why should a physicist care?  Ropelengths of knots appear to be in one-to-one, linear correspondence with energies of glueballs, extremely short-lived particles made up of gluons.   We discuss how we're finding the missing ropelengths, by working with composite knots/links.  Furthermore, unmatched ropelengths can predict some missing glueball energies.

This is joint work with Jason Cantarella (U. Georgia Math), Tom Kephart (Vanderbilt Physics), and Eric Rawdon (St. Thomas U. Math).