Workshop Announcement:

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  Sphere Packings, Lattices, and Infinite Dimensional Algebra
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                 August 16 to August 20, 2004

  American Institute of Mathematics Research Conference Center

                     Palo Alto, California

        http://aimath.org/ARCC/workshops/spherepacking.html


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Description:
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This workshop, sponsored by AIM and the NSF, will focus on sphere
packings and lattice packings, with particular attention to 
dimensions 8 and 24 and the connection with automorphic forms
and Moonshine.

Primarily, the workshop will consist of:

1. An investigation of the techniques of Cohn and Elkies, and of 
Cohn and Kumar, which are conjectured to give rise to a proof that
the $E_8$ root lattice and the Leech lattice give the densest
sphere packings in ${\Bbb R}^{8}$ and ${\Bbb R}^{24}$, respectively. 

2. An introduction to the recent work of Frenkel, Lepowsky, and
Meurman, and of Huang, which indicates  deep connections between
lattices, codes and  conformal field theory. 

The workshop is organized by
Lisa Carbone, Noam Elkies, and Jim Lepowsky.

For more details please see the workshop announcement page:
http://aimath.org/ARCC/workshops/spherepacking.html

Space and funding is available for a few more participants.
If you would like to participate, please apply by filling
out the on-line form (available at the link above) no later
than May 16, 2004. Applications are open to all, and
we especially encourage women, underrepresented minorities,
junior mathematicians, and researchers from primarily
undergraduate institutions to apply.

Before submitting an application, please read the ARCC
policies concerning participation and financial support
for participants.

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AIM Research Conference Center (ARCC):
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The AIM Research Conference Center (ARCC) will hosts focused
workshops in all areas of the mathematical sciences. ARCC
focused workshops are distinguished by their emphasis on
a specific mathematical goal, such as making progress on a
significant unsolved problem, understanding the proof of an
important new result, or investigating the convergence between
two distinct areas of mathematics.

For more information about ARCC, please visit
http://www.aimath.org/ARCC/