Speakers
Horia Magureanu
Abstract
I will review some aspects of the Seiberg-Witten description of the Coulomb branches of rank-one 4d N=2 supersymmetric QFTs, emphasising certain links with the theory of rational elliptic surfaces. In this setup, the natural rank-one theories turn out to be the circle compactification of the five-dimensional Seiberg E_n SCFTs. The configurations of singular fibres of such surfaces have been classified by Persson and Miranda and serve as a tool for understanding RG flows as well as global aspects of the flavour symmetry. Additionally, many of these surfaces have interesting modular properties which can be used to find the spectrum of light BPS particles at strong coupling and the associated BPS quivers.