Évènement

Abstract: Nowadays, it seems obvious that mathematics provide tools to describe our physical reality. Newton’s laws of motion, Maxwell’s equations for Electromagnetism, Einstein’s equations of General Relativity are among the most influent examples of how to describe the world with numbers and how to predict the future with them. However, this reasoning was neither obvious nor commonly used before the early XVIIth century and Galileo’s contributions to science.

The current research in physics systematically uses mathematics as a powerful tool. Though, physicists may neglect the mathematical structure underlying the numbers, vectors and functions. Such structures provide great insights into the behavior of our universe.

In this talk, we will illustrate the concept of tangent bundles with toy examples like the well-known pendulum. Then we will describe and motivate the basic concepts of fiber bundles. Finally, we will provide a new formalism for electromagnetism where Maxwell’s equations look… ridiculously obvious.