Colloquium

Stringing Madhava’s pi: A quantum field theory perspective

Speaker: Aninda Sinha (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore)

Date and time

Abstract

I will re-examine the origins of string theory which were based on experimental results in hadron scattering. I will question the uniqueness of the proposed resolution. In doing so, we are forced to take a conservative approach and use standard quantum field theory insights based on Feynman diagrams. This leads to a new representation of the classic 18th century Euler Beta function (which is taught in an undergraduate mathematical methods course) that does not exist in the mathematics literature. As a very interesting corollary, this gives an infinite class of new formulas for pi: the oldest series for pi known as the Madhava series or Madhava-Leibniz series belongs to this class.

Aninda Sinha

Short Biography
Aninda Sinha is a professor at the Centre for High Energy Physics at the Indian Institute of Science and a QHA chair professor at the University of Calgary. He did his PhD from the University of Cambridge and was a fellow of Gonville and Caius College before moving to the Perimeter Institute Canada for a second postdoc. He joined IISc in 2010. He is a recipient of the Mayhew prize from Cambridge University, the Swarnajayanti fellowship and the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize from the Govt of India and the ICTP prize from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Italy. He is a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore.