O. Hohm, HU

Title: “Higher gauge theories in string and M-theory”

Abstract: I try to give an informal overview of the research program that my group is pursuing, focusing on the “higher” algebraic structures that emerge once certain features such as manifest duality invariance and the presence of higher string/M-theory modes are required. As an introduction I revisit N=8 superconformal field theories in D=3, allowing for infinite-dimensional gauge algebras beyond Lie algebras, so-called Leibniz-Loday algebras (and their associated L-infinity algebras). This provides a formulation that yields an infinite-dimensional generalization of the the Bagger-Lambert model.