Seminar in Algebraic Geometry and Number Theory

Abstract: Using physics methods, Saha and Sinha recently obtained many intriguing expansions of string amplitudes. One very special case gives a generalization of Madhava's series for pi, which received a lot of media attention. I will discuss these identities from a mathematical perspective. They can be derived from partial fraction expansions for symmetric rational functions, which may have some independent interest. The talk is based on the preprint https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.06658