Abstract

A long-standing problem in quantum topology is to find a function, more precisely a q-series with integer coefficients, such that its limiting values at primitive roots of unity yield invariants of Witten and Reshetikhin-Turaev. In other words, such a function would be to 3-manifolds what the Jones polynomial is to knots. Somewhat surprisingly, recent physics developments suggest that, in order to solve this problem, one must associate to a 3-manifold not a single function (q-series), but rather a collection of functions. Very recently, based on both physical intuition and explicit computations, it was suggested that these 3-manifold invariants display (modified) modularity properties of various types and are related to number theoretic objects including mock and false theta functions and quantum modular forms. This workshop will bring experts from the fields of topology, physics and number theory together, with the goal of combining knowledge and computational skills and furthering the understanding of the modular properties of the 3-manifold invariants.

This workshop is fully funded by a Simons Foundation Targeted Grant to Institutes.