2022/12/29 by Daniel Sternheimer, Sternheimer, Daniel
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #17B37 #20G42 #53D55 #70S10 (Primary) #81T20 #81V25 #83C47 (Secondary) #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #FOS: Mathematics #FOS: Physical sciences #Group Theory (math.GR) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Homotopy and Cohomology in Algebraic Topology #Mathematical Physics (math-ph) #Quantum Algebra (math.QA) #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2212.14316
openalex publication_date 2022/12/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Symmetries and their applications always played an important role in I.E. Segal's work. I shall exemplify this, starting with his correct proof (at the Lie group level) of what physicists call the ``O'Raifeartaigh theorem", continuing with his incidental introduction in 1951 of the (1953) Inönü--Wigner contractions, of which the passage from AdS (SO(2,3)) to Poincaré is an important example, and with his interest in conformal groups in the latter part of last century. Since the 60s Flato and I had many fruitful interactions with him around these topics. In a last section I succinctly relate these interests in symmetries with several of ours, especially elementary particles symmetries and deformation quantization, and with an ongoing program combining both.