Description
The theory of quantum cohomology was initially developed in the early 1990s by physicists working on superstring theory. Mathematicians then discovered applications to enumerative geometry, counting the number of rational curves of a given degree satisfying certain incidence conditions, but the impact now extends into many other aspects of algebraic geometry, combinatorics, representation theory, number theory, and even back to physics. In this talk, we will explore the "rim hook rule" which provides a fun and efficient way to compute products in the quantum cohomology of the Grassmannian of k-dimensional planes in complex n-space. This talk will be very concrete and completely self-contained, assuming only a background in basic linear algebra.