Abstract:
Tensors are ubiquitous in mathematics and physics, and are natural tools in the description of quantum systems. There is a simple graphical formalism that provides an intuitive way to represent tensors and easily visualise simplifications. Various incarnations of the idea include Feynman diagrams, Penrose's spin networks, and what are now known as tensor networks. I will give a basic and informal introduction to the framework, looking in particular at how it can be used to analyse time-evolving quantum systems and particular classes of many-body states.