An explicit understanding of the category of all (smooth, complex) representations of p-adic groups provides an important tool not just within representation theory, but also for the construction of an explicit and a categorical local Langlands correspondence, and has applications to the study of automorphic forms, for example. In my talk I will introduce p-adic groups and explain that the category of representations of p-adic groups decomposes into subcategories, called Bernstein blocks. I will then provide an overview of what we know about the structure of these Bernstein blocks. In particular, I will sketch how to use a joint project in progress with Jeffrey Adler, Manish Mishra and Kazuma Ohara to reduce a lot of problems about the (category of) representations of p-adic groups to problems about representations of finite groups of Lie type, where answers are often already known or easier to achieve.

This video was produced by the University of Münster, as part of the workshop Mathematics Münster Mid-term Conference.