Gregory Moore - From RCFT To MTC 

This talk was given as a part of Plectics Labs Perspectives In Theoretical Physics Series.
Speaker: Gregory Moore
Affiliations: Rutgers University
Date: September 26, 2024
Title: From RCFT To MTC
Abstract: This will be a personal account of how the desire to construct some special models of string compactification led to the general idea of Rational Conformal Field Theory (RCFT). Then, how the desire to classify RCFTs led to the invention/discovery of the notion of a Modular Tensor Category (MTC), in work of G. Moore and N. Seiberg. Finally, it will address how MTCs were first applied to the idea that in 2+1 dimensions there can be particles that obey nonabelian statistics, in work of G. Moore and N. Read. It must be stressed that this is not meant to be a definitive history, but rather is meant to provide primary material for a hypothetical future historian of science interested in the above topics.