Seminars in Analytic Number Theory

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Tom Gannon: Quantization of the universal centralizer and central D-modules

14th October, 2024

We will discuss joint work with Victor Ginzburg that proves a conjecture of Nadler on the existence of a quantization, or non-commutative deformation, of the Knop-Ngô morphism, a morphism of group schemes used in particular by Ngô in his proof of the fundamental lemma in the Langlands programme. We will first explain the representation-theoretic background, give an extended example of this morphism for the group GLn(ℂ), and then present a precise statement of our theorem.

Time permitting, we will also discuss how the tools used to construct this quantization can also be used to prove conjectures of Ben-Zvi and Gunningham, which predict a relationship between the quantization of the Knop-Ngô morphism and the parabolic induction functor, as well as an "exactness" conjecture of Braverman and Kazhdan in the D-module setting.

David Loeffler: Euler systems and the Bloch-Kato conjecture

27th March, 2024

The Bloch-Kato conjecture, relating special values of L-functions to algebraic data, is one of the most important open problems in number theory; it includes the Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture for elliptic curves as a special case. I will describe some recent breakthroughs establishing special cases of this conjecture (and related problems such as the Iwasawa
main conjecture) using the method of Euler systems.

Jessica Fintzen: An introduction to representations of p-adic groups

25th March, 2024

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.

Tony Feng: Mirror Symmetry and the Breuil-Mezard Conjecture

4th December, 2023

The Breuil-Mezard Conjecture predicts the existence of hypothetical "Breuil-Mezard cycles" that should govern congruences between mod p automorphic forms on a reductive group G. Most of the progress thus far has been concentrated on the case G = GL2, which has several special features. I will talk about joint work with Bao Le Hung on a new approach to the Breuil-Mezard Conjecture, which applies for arbitrary groups (and in particular, in arbitrary rank). It is based on the intuition that the Breuil-Mezard conjecture is analogous to homological mirror symmetry.

Gene Kopp: The Shintani-Faddeev Modular Cocycle

9th November, 2023

We ask the question, "how does the infinite q-Pochhammer symbol transform under modular transformations?" and connect the answer to that question to the Stark conjectures. The infinite q-Pochhammer symbol transforms by a generalized factor of automorphy, or modular 1-cocycle, that is analytic on a cut complex plane. This "Shintani–Faddeev modular cocycle" is an SL2(ℤ)-parametrized family of functions generalizing Shintani’s double sine function and Faddeev’s non-compact quantum dilogarithm. We relate real multiplication values of the Shintani-Faddeev modular cocycle to exponentials of certain derivative L-values, conjectured by Stark to be algebraic units generating abelian extensions of real quadratic fields.

Craig Westerland: The Stable Homology of the Braid Group with Coefficients Arising from the Hyperelliptic Representation

2nd November, 2023

The braid group B2g+1 has a description in terms of the hyperelliptic mapping class group of a curve X of genus g. This equips it with an action on V = H1(X), and we may produce a wealth of new representations Sλ(V) by applying Schur functors to V. The goal of this talk is to describe the stable (in g) group homology of these representations. Following an idea of Randal-Williams in the setting of the full mapping class group, one may extract these homology groups as Taylor coefficients of the functor given by the stable homology of the space of maps from the universal hyperelliptic curve to a varying target space. We compute that stable homology by way of a scanning argument, much as in Segal’s original computation of the stable homology of configuration spaces. This is joint work with Bergström, Diaconu, and Petersen. Dan will speak afterwards on the application of these results to the conjecture of Andrade-Keating on moments of quadratic L-functions in the function field setting.

Dan Petersen: Moments of Families of Quadratic L-Functions Over Function Fields Via Homotopy Theory

2nd November, 2023

This is a report of joint work with Bergström-Diaconu-Westerland and Miller-Patzt-Randal-Williams. Based on random matrix theory, Conrey-Farmer-Keating-Rubinstein-Snaith have conjectured precise asymptotics for moments of families of quadratic L-functions over number fields. There is an extremely similar function field analogue, worked out by Andrade-Keating. I will explain that one can relate this problem to understanding the homology of the braid group with certain symplectic coefficients. With Bergström-Diaconu-Westerland we compute the stable homology groups of the braid groups with these coefficients, together with their structure as Galois representations. (This will be explained in Craig Westerland's lecture on Nov 2.) We moreover show that the answer matches the number-theoretic predictions. With Miller-Patzt-Randal-Williams we prove an improved range for homological stability with these coefficients. (This will be explained in my lecture on Nov 3.) Together, these results imply the conjectured asymptotics for all moments in the function field case, for all sufficiently large (but fixed) q.