Abstract: CS Department colloquium

It would be nice to have a mathematical understanding of basic biological concepts and to be able to prove that life must evolve in very general circumstances. At present we are far from being able to do this. But I'll discuss some partial steps in this direction plus what I regard as a possible future line of attack.

Abstract: Given a fixed binary form $f(u,v)$ of degree $d$ over a field $k$, the associated Clifford algebra is the $k$-algebra $C_f=k\{u,v\}/I$, where $I$ is the two-sided ideal generated by elements of the form $(\alpha u+\beta v)^{d}-f(\alpha,\beta)$ with $\alpha$ and $\beta$ arbitrary elements in $k$. All representations of $C_f$ have dimensions that are multiples of $d$, and occur in families. In this article we construct fine moduli spaces $U=U_{f,r}$ for the $rd$-dimensional representations of $C_f$ for each $r \geq 2$. Our construction starts with the projective curve $C \subset \mathbb{P}^{2}_{k}$ defined by the equation $w^d=f(u,v)$, and produces $U_{f,r}$ as a quasiprojective variety in the moduli space $\mathcal{M}(r,d_r)$ of stable vector bundles over $C$ with rank $r$ and degree $d_r=r(d+g-1) $, where $g$ denotes the genus of $C$.