Conformal blocks and rational normal curves -- Noah Giansiracusa, February 4, 2011

I'll discuss a result that the Chow quotient parametrizing configurations of n points in Pd which generically lie on a rational normal curve is isomorphic to M0,n, generalizing the well-known d = 1 result of Kapranov. The corresponding GIT quotients, for symmetric linearization, are related to certain line bundles coming from the genus zero WZW model in conformal field theory. A representation-theoretic symmetry is manifest as the classical Gale transform in this setting.