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


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I'll discuss a result that the Chow quotient parametrizing
configurations of n points in P<sup>d</sup> which generically
lie on a rational normal curve is isomorphic to
<font style="text-decoration: overline;">M</font><sub>0,n</sub>, 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.