I will present a new trace formula approach to Waldspurger's formula for toric periods of automorphic forms on $PGL_2$. The method is motivated by interpreting Waldspurger's result as a period relation on $SO_2 \times SO_3$, which leads to a strange comparison of relative trace formulas. I will explain the local results needed to carry out this comparison, and discuss some small progress towards extending these results to high rank orthogonal groups.

For a smooth projective variety X over an algebraic number field a conjecture of Bloch and Beilinson predicts that the kernel of the Abel-Jacobi map of X is a torsion group. When X is a curve, this follows by the Mordell-Weil theorem. In higher dimensions however there is hardly any evidence for this conjecture. In this talk I will focus on the case when X is a product of smooth projective curves and construct infinitely many nontrivial examples that satisfy a weaker form of the Bloch-Beilinson conjecture. This relies on a recent joint work with Jonathan Love.

Ribet’s method describes a way to construct a certain extension of fields from the existence of a suitable modular form. To do so, we consider the Galois representation of an appropriate cuspform, which gives rise to a cohomology class that cuts out our desired extension. The process of obtaining a cohomology class from such a representation is usually known as Ribet’s lemma. Several generalizations of this lemma have been stated and proved during the last decades, but the vast majority of them makes the assumption that the representation is residually distinguishable, meaning that the characters of its residual decomposition are non-congruent modulo the maximal ideal. However, recent applications of Ribet’s method, such as for the proof of the 2-part of the Brumer-Stark conjecture, have encountered the challenge that the representation we obtain does not satisfy this assumption. In my talk, I describe the limitations of the residually indistinguishable case and conjecture a new general version of Ribet’s lemma in this context, giving a proof in some particular cases.

In 1966 Artin and Tate constructed a canonical pairing on the Brauer group of a surface over a finite field, and conjectured it to be alternating. This duality has analogous incarnations across arithmetic and topology, namely the Cassels-Tate pairing for a Jacobian variety, and the linking form on a 5-manifold. I will explain a proof of the conjecture, which is based on a surprising connection to Steenrod operations.

In this talk, I will first review relative (unipotent) completions of discrete groups in general, and $\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z})$ in particular. We then develop an explicit $\mathbb{Q}$-de Rham theory for the relative completion of $\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z})$, which enables us to construct iterated integrals of modular forms of the second kind that provide its periods. Following Francis Brown, these periods are called `multiple modular values'. They contain periods of modular forms.

We will give an explicit construction of the regular quotient of Morrissey-Ngô in the case of a symmetric pair. In the case of a quasisplit form (i.e. the regular centralizer group scheme is abelian), we will give a Galois description of the regular centralizer group scheme using parabolic covers. We will then describe how the nonseparated structure of the regular quotient recovers the spectral description of Hitchin fibers given by Schapostnik for U(n,n) Higgs bundles. This work is joint with B. Morrissey.

Orbital integrals for the Lie algebra can be analyzed using the Hitchin fibration. In turn the Hitchin fibration can be analyzed via the morphism g^{reg} ----> g//G from the regular elements of the Lie algebra, to the GIT quotient by the adjoint action. In trying to generalize this story by replacing the action of G on g by the action of G on some sufficiently nice variety M, we must replace the GIT quotient with what we call the regular quotient. This talk will look at the reasons for this, and the difference between the GIT and regular quotients in the case of G acting on G by conjugation (when the derived group of G is not simply connected), G acting on the commuting scheme, and G acting on the Vinberg monoid.

A page in Ramanujan's lost notebook contains two identities for trigonometric sums in terms of doubly infinite series of Bessel functions. One is related to the famous ``circle problem'' and the other to the equally famous ``divisor problem.'' We discuss these classical unsolved problems. Each identity can be interpreted in three distinct ways. We discuss various methods that have been devised to prove the identities under these different interpretations. Weighted divisor sums naturally arise, and new methods for estimating trigonometric sums need to be developed. Trigonometric analogues and extensions of Ramanujan's identities to Riesz and logarithmic sums are discussed. The research to be described is joint work with Sun Kim and Alexandru Zaharescu.

We develop a version of the Kloosterman circle method with a bump function that is used to provide asymptotics for weighted representation numbers of positive definite integral quadratic forms. Unlike many applications of the Kloosterman circle method, we explicitly state some constants in the error terms that depend on the quadratic form. This version of the Kloosterman circle method uses Gauss sums, Kloosterman sums, Salié sums, and a principle of nonstationary phase. If time permits, we may discuss a potential application of this version of the Kloosterman circle method to a proof of a strong asymptotic local-global principle for certain Kleinian sphere packings.

We consider the family of $D_4$-quartic fields ordered by the Artin conductors of the corresponding 2-dimensional irreducible Galois representations. In this talk, I will describe ways to compute the number of such $D_4$ fields with bounded conductor. Traditionally, there have been two approaches to counting quartic fields, using arithmetic invariant theory in combination of geometry-of-number techniques, and applying Kummer theory together with L-function methods. Both of these strategies fall short in the case of $D_4$ fields since counting quartic fields containing a quadratic subfield of large discriminant is difficult. However, when ordering by conductor, these techniques can be utilized due to additional algebraic structure that the Galois closures of such quartic fields have, arising from the outer automorphism of $D_4$. This result is joint work with Ali Altug, Arul Shankar, and Kevin Wilson.

For a finite 2-generated group G, one can consider the moduli of elliptic curves equipped with G-structures, which is roughly a G-Galois cover of the elliptic curve, unramified away from the origin. The resulting moduli spaces are quotients of the upper half plane by possibly noncongruence subgroups of SL(2,Z). When G is abelian, it is easy to see that such level structures are equivalent to classical congruence level structures, but in general it is difficult to classify the groups G which yield congruence level structures. In this talk I will focus on a recent joint result with Pierre Deligne, where we show that for any metabelian G, G-structures are congruence in an arithmetic sense. We do this by studying the monodromy action of the fundamental group of the moduli stack of elliptic curves (over Q) on the pro-metabelian fundamental group of a punctured elliptic curve.

Whittaker functions are certain special functions that play a central role in automorphic representation theory. When dealing with automorphic forms on covering groups, new methods are needed to compute these functions. In this talk, I will outline how the study of this problem has uncovered connections with geometric representation theory and crystal graphs. I also explain my work in making this connection practical, allowing for new computations of spherical Whittaker functions for covering groups.

Let $F$ be a number field with ring of adeles $\mathbb{A}_F$. Let $r_1,r_2,r_3$ be a triple of positive integers and let $\pi:=\otimes_{i=1}^3\pi_i$ where the $\pi_i$ are all cuspidal automorphic representations of $\mathrm{GL}_{r_i}(\mathbb{A}_F)$. We denote by $L(s,\pi, \otimes^3)=L(s, \pi_1\times \pi_2 \times \pi_3)$ the corresponding triple product $L$-function. It is the Langlands $L$-function defined by the tensor product representation $\otimes^3:{}^L(\mathrm{GL}_{r_1} \times \mathrm{GL}_{r_2} \times \mathrm{GL}_{r_3}) \to \mathrm{GL}_{r_1r_2r_3}(\mathbb{C})$. In this talk I will present a family of Eulerian period integrals, which are holomorphic multiples of the triple product -function in a domain that nontrivially intersects the critical strip. We expect that they satisfy a local multiplicity one statement and a local functional equation. This is joint work with Jayce Getz, Chun-Hsien Hsu and Spencer Leslie.

Markoff triples were introduced in 1879 and have a rich history spanning many branches of mathematics. In 2016, Bourgain, Gamburd, and Sarnak answered a long standing question by showing there exist infinitely many composite Markoff numbers. Their proof relied on showing the connectivity for an infinite family of graphs associated to Markoff triples modulo p for infinitely many primes p. In this talk we discuss what happens for the projective analogue of Markoff triples, that is surfaces W in P^1 x P^1 x P^1 cut out by the vanishing of a (2,2,2)-form that admit three non-commuting involutions and are fixed under coordinate permutations and double sign changes. Inspired by the work of B-G-S we investigate such surfaces over finite fields, specifically their orbit structure under their automorphism group. For a specific one-parameter subfamily W_k of such surfaces, we construct finite orbits in W_k(C) by studying small orbits that appear in W_k(F_p) for many values of p and k. This talk is based on joint work with E. Fuchs, J. Silverman, and A. Tran.

Following the method developed by Waldspurger and Beuzart-Plessis in their proof of the local Gan-Gross-Prasad conjecture, we were able to prove the multiplicity one theorem on Vogan L-packet for the Ginzburg-Rallis model. In some cases, we also proved the epsilon dichotomy conjecture which gives a relation between the multiplicity and the value of the exterior cube epsilon factor.

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 SL_2(Z)-parametrized family of functions generalizing Shintani's double sine function and Faddeev's noncompact 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.

We show that the distributions occurring in the geometric and spectral side of the twisted Arthur-Selberg trace formula extend to non-compactly supported test functions. The geometric assertion is modulo a hypothesis on root systems proven among other cases, when the group is split. This result extends the work of Finis-Lapid (and Muller, spectral side) in the non-twisted setting. In the end, we will give an application towards residues of Rankin-Selberg L-functions suggested by J. Getz.

For a non-degenerate integral quadratic form F(x1,...,xd) in 5 (or more) variables, we prove an optimal strong approximation theorem. Fix any compact subspace Ω⊂Rd of the affine quadric F(x1,...,xd)=1. Suppose that we are given a small ball B of radius 0 < r < 1 inside Ω, and an integer m. Further assume that N is a given integer which satisfies N ≫ (r−1m)4+ε for any ε > 0. Finally assume that we are given an integral vector (λ1, . . . , λd) mod m. Then we show that there exists an integral solution x = (x1, . . . , xd) x of F(x)=N such that xi ≡λi mod m and √N ∈B, provided that all the local conditions are satisfied. We also show that 4 is the best possible exponent. Moreover, for a non-degenerate integral quadratic form F (x1 , . . . , x4 ) in 4 variables we prove the same result if N ≥ (r−1m)6+ε and N is not divisible by 2k where 2k ≫ Nε for any ε. Based on some numerical experiments on the diameter of LPS Ramanujan graphs, we conjecture that the optimal strong approximation theorem holds for any quadratic form F(X) in 4 variables with the optimal exponent 4.

Joint work with Jacob Tsimerman. Let B(g,p) denote the number of isomorphism classes of g-dimensional abelian varieties over the finite field of size p. Let A(g,p) denote the number of isomorphism classes of principally polarized g dimensional abelian varieties over the finite field of size p. We derive upper bounds for B(g,p) and lower bounds for A(g,p) for p fixed and g increasing. The extremely large gap between the lower bound for A(g,p) and the upper bound B(g,p) implies some statistically counterintuitive behavior for abelian varieties of large dimension over a fixed finite field.