Theoretical Physics Seminar: Elli Heyes

Title: Generating Calabi-Yau Manifolds with Genetic Algorithms

Abstract: Calabi-Yau manifolds can be obtained as hypersurfaces in toric varieties built from reflexive polytopes. We generate reflexive polytopes in various dimensions using a genetic algorithm.  As a proof of principle, we demonstrate that our algorithm reproduces the full set of reflexive polytopes in two and three dimensions, and in four dimensions with a small number of points. Motivated by this result, we construct five-dimensional reflexive polytopes with the lowest number of points. We establish that many of these are not in existing datasets and therefore give rise to new Calabi-Yau four-folds.