Integration of differential forms against cycles on a complex manifold helps relate de Rham cohomology to singular cohomology, which forms the beginning of Hodge theory. The analogous story for p-adic manifolds, which is the subject of p-adic Hodge theory, is richer due to a wider variety of available cohomology theories (de Rham, etale, crystalline, and more) and torsion phenomena. In this talk, I will give a bird's eye view of this picture, guided by the recently discovered notion of prismatic cohomology that provides some cohesion to the story. (Based on joint work with Morrow and Scholze as well as work in progress with Scholze.)

Moduli spaces of sheaves on K3 surfaces have been well-studied when defined over the complex numbers, because they are one of the known families of hyperkaehler varieties. However, many of their arithmetic properties when defined over an arbitrary field are still unknown. In this talk, I will tell you about a new result in this direction: two such moduli spaces of the same dimension, when defined over a finite field, have the same number of points defined over every finite field extension of the base field, which is surprising when the moduli spaces are not birational. The way to get at this result is to study the cohomology groups of the moduli spaces as Galois representations. Over an arbitrary field, we find that all of the cohomology groups are isomorphic as Galois representations.

A fundamental problem in algebraic geometry is to determine whether a given algebraic variety is birational to projective space. This is most prominently open for cubic fourfolds, i.e. hypersurfaces defined by a cubic polynomial in a five-dimensional projective space. A decade ago, Kuznetsov suggested an approach to this problem using the derived category of coherent sheaves. I will explain recent applications of this perspective to fundamental questions in hyperkahler geometry and Hodge theory, which in turn shed light on the original question about cubic fourfolds.

Period map is a powerful tool to study geometric objects related to K3 surfaces and cubic 4-folds. In this talk, we focus on moduli of cubic 4-folds and sextic curves with specified symmetries and singularities. We identify the geometric (GIT) compactifications with the Hodge theoretic (Looijenga, mostly Baily-Borel) compactifications of locally symmetric varieties. As a corollary, the algebra of GIT invariants is identified with the algebra of automorphic forms on the corresponding period domains. One of the key inputs is the functorial property of semi-toric compactifications of locally symmetric varieties. Our work generalizes results of Matsumoto-Sasaki-Yoshida, Allcock-Carlson-Toledo, Looijenga-Swierstra and Laza-Pearlstein-Zhang. This is joint work with Zhiwei Zheng.

I will describe some aspects of the geometry of K3 surfaces in positive characteristic, including derived-category replacements for the classical Torelli theorem, supersingular analogues of twistor spaces, and some consequences for the arithmetic of certain elliptic curves over function fields. Some of the work described is joint with Daniel Bragg, and some is joint with Martin Olsson.

The Weak Lefschetz theorem (or the Lefschetz hyperplane theorem) states that for a smooth, projective variety Y and a smooth hyperplane section X in Y, the restriction map of cohomologies H^i(Y) to H^i(X) is an isomorphism for i less than dim{X}, and an injection when i equal to dim{X}. Analogues of this theorem have been conjectured for algebraic cycles. We will talk about some results in this area. We will also talk about such questions for vector bundles.

In this talk, I will introduce some new relative trace formulas toward the global Gan-Gross-Prasad conjecture for unitary groups, which generalize the trace formulas of Jacquet-Rallis and Flicker. In particular, I will state the corresponding conjecture of relative fundamental lemmas. A relation between the well-studied Jacquet-Rallis case the equal-rank case will also be discussed.

In 1990, Candelas, de la Ossa, Green, and Parkes used the then-new technique of mirror symmetry to predict the number of rational curves of each fixed degree on a quintic threefold. The techniques used in the prediction were subsequently understood in Hodge-theoretic terms: the predictions are encoded in a power-series expansion of a quantity which describes the variation of Hodge structures, and in particular this power-series expansion is calculated from the periods of the holomorphic three-form on the quintic, which satisfy the Picard-- Fuchs differential equation. In 2006, Johannes Walcher made an analogous prediction for the number of holomorphic disks on the complexification of a real quintic threefold whose boundaries lie on the real quintic, in each fixed relative homology class. (The predictions were subsequently verified by Pandharipande, Solomon, and Walcher.) This talk will report on recent joint work of Walcher and the speaker which gives the Hodge- theoretic context for Walcher's predictions. The crucial physical quantity "domain wall tension" is interpreted as a Poincar\'e normal function, that is, a holomorphic section of the bundle of Griffiths intermediate Jacobians. And the periods are generalized to period integrals of the holomorphic three-form over appropriate 3-chains (not necessarily closed), which leads to a generalization of the Picard--Fuchs equations.

It has been 30 years since Koll\’ar and Shepherd-Barron published their groundbreaking paper describing a compactification of Gieseker’s moduli space of surfaces of general type. As with all compactifications, the work raised natural questions. What is the structure of these moduli spaces and the boundary in particular? What sorts of singularities might we expect to obtain? What types of surfaces give rise to divisors in the moduli space, and are these divisors smooth? We discuss general results bounding types of Wahl singularities, and use them to address these questions in the context of Horikawa-type surfaces.

Given an elliptic curve over a finite field, one might reasonably ask for the chance that it has a rational point of order $\ell$. More generally, what is the chance that a curve drawn from a family over a finite field has a point of order $\ell$ on its Jacobian? The answer is encoded in an $\ell$-adic representation associated to the family in question. In this talk, I'll answer this question for hyper- or trielliptic curves, and give some results concerning an arbitrary family of curves. ** Keeping in mind what you said about the audience, I'll focus on the geometric and topological ideas.

This talk is about complex analytic geometry, the field of mathematics concerned with complex manifolds and more generally with complex analytic spaces. The "curves" of the title are compact Riemann surfaces and the "surfaces" in the title are compact complex manifolds of dimension 2 over the complex numbers (and hence dimension 4 over the real numbers). The talk will explore the problem of constructing two dimensional complex manifolds by deforming known complex analytic spaces. It will focus on a single example. The talk should be quasi-accessible to anyone who has courses in Riemann surfaces and algebraic topology.

In this talk I will discuss joint work with J. Achter and C. Vial showing that the image of the Abel--Jacobi map on algebraically trivial cycles descends to the field of definition for smooth projective varieties defined over subfields of the complex numbers. The main focus will be on applications to topics such as: descending cohomology geometrically, a conjecture of Orlov regarding the derived category and Hodge theory, and motivated admissible normal functions.

In this talk, I will discuss the problem of computing the cohomology of the general sheaf in a moduli space of sheaves on a surface. I will concentrate on the case of rational and K3 surfaces. The case of rational surfaces is joint work with Jack Huizenga and the case of K3 surfaces is joint work with Howard Nuer and Kota Yoshioka.

Hodge structures on cohomology groups are fundamental invariants of algebraic varieties; they are parametrized by quotients $D/\Gamma$ of period domains by arithmetic groups. Except for a few very special cases, such quotients are never algebraic varieties, and this leads to many difficulties in the general theory. We explain how to partially remedy this situation by equipping $D/\Gamma$ with an o-minimal structure in which any period map is definable. The algebraicity of Hodge loci is an immediate consequence via a theorem of Peterzil--Starchenko. We further prove a general GAGA type theorem in the definable category, and deduce some finer algebraization results. This is joint work with Y. Brunebarbe, B. Klingler, and J.Tsimerman.

NOTE SEMINAR TIME: NOON!! Abstract: Let p be a prime number, F a field containing a primitive pth root of unity, and E/F a cyclic extension of degree p, with Galois group G. Let G_E be the absolute Galois group of E. The cohomology groups H^i(E,Fp)=Hî(G_E,Fp) possess a natural structure as FpG-modules and decompose into direct sums of indecomposables. In the 1960s Boreviè and Faddeev gave decompositions of E^*/E^*p -- the case i=1 -- for local fields. We describe the case i=1 for arbitrary fields, and then, using the Bloch-Kato Conjecture, we also determine the case i>1. No small surprise arises from the fact that there exist indecomposable FpG-modules which never appear in these module decompositions. We give several consequences of these results, notably a generalization of the Schreier formula for G_E, connections with Demu¹kin groups, and new families of pro-p-groups that cannot be realized as absolute Galois groups. These results have been obtained in collaboration with D. Benson, J. Labute, N. Lemire, and J. Mináè.

Orlov has recently proven a remarkable equivalence between the derived category of coherent sheaves on a Calabi-Yau variety and a particular category of matrix factorizations. I review this work and explain why it's so interesting to string theorists.

        I will report on joint work M.A. Barja (UPC, Barcelona) and L. Stoppino (Universita' dell'Insubria, Como - Italy).
        Given a generically finite map a:X--> A, where X is a smooth projective variety and A is an abelian variety, and given a line bundle L on X, we study the linear system |L+P|, where P is a general element of Pic^0(A). We prove that up to taking base change with a suitable multiplication map A-->A, the map given by |L+P| is independent of P and induces a factorization of the map a. When L is the canonical bundle of X, this factorization is a new geometrical object intrinsically attached to the variety X.
        The factorization theorem also allows us to improve the known Clifford-Severi and Castelnuovo type numerical inequalities for line bundles on X, under certain assumptions on the map a:X-->A. A key tool in these proofs is the introduction of a real function, the continuous rank function, that also allows us to simplify considerably the proof of the general Clifford-Severi inequality.

We will consider the problem of describing the group of autoequivalences of the derived categories of smooth K3 surfaces. After recalling the (Twisted) Derived Torelli Theorem, we will focus on its conjectural refinement, involving the preservation of the orientation of some 4-dimensional space in the total cohomology lattice. The conjecture will be proved in the generic (non-projective) case and we will discuss a few results which will possibly lead to the proof of the conjecture for smooth projective K3 surfaces. This is a joint work with D. Huybrechts and E. Macri'.

The problem of spectral estimation, namely – recovering the frequency contents of a signal – arises in various applications, including array imaging and remote sensing. In these fields, the spectrum of natural signals is composed of a few atoms on the continuum of a bounded domain. After the emergence of compressive sensing, spectral estimation was widely explored with an emphasis on sparse measurements. However, with a few exceptions, the spectrum considered in the compressive sensing community is assumed to be located on a DFT grid, which results in a large gridding error.
In this talk, I will present the MUltiple SIgnal Classification (MUSIC) algorithm and some modified greedy algorithms, and show how the problem of gridding error can be resolved by these methods. Our work focuses on a stability analysis as well as numerical studies on the performance of these algorithms. Moreover, the MUSIC algorithm features its super-resolution effect, i.e., the capability of resolving closely spaced frequencies. We will provide some numerical experiments and theoretical justifications to show that the resolution length of MUSIC follows a power law with respect to the minimum separation of frequencies.

We consider the "limiting behavior" of *discriminants* (or their complements), by which we mean informally the closed locus in some parameter space of some type of object where the objects have singularities. We focus on the collection of unordered points on a variety X, and linear systems on X. These are connected --- we use the first to understand the second. We describe their classes in the Grothendieck ring of varieties, as the number of points gets large, or as the line bundle gets very positive. As applications, (i) we show the motivic analogue of Poonen's point-counting result: the motivic probability of a section of L being smooth (as L gets large) is 1 / Z_X( \A^{-\dim X - 1} ) (where Z_X is the motivic zeta function), and (ii) show a priori unexpected structure in configuration spaces of points on a variety, with topological and point-counting consequences. Some low-tech examples: if v is a partition of n \leq 9, and v \neq (1,1,2,2,3), then the v-discriminant in the space of degree n polynomials (those polynomials with those root multiplicities, or worse) can be cut-and-pasted into affine space. (Question: over \C, does the complement have only two nonvanishing cohomology groups? What structure remains when n is larger?) This is joint work with Ravi Vakil.

We study smooth, projective varieties with trivial canonical sheaf. Properties of such varieties over the complex numbers will be recalled, especially in dimension 3 in the case that the first cohomology group is zero. We construct examples in positive characteristic which have quite different properties. This leads us to explore the notion of supersingularity and to pose some open questions.

In this talk, I will discuss Chow motives and the Rost nilpotence principle, which played a role in Voevodsky's celebrated proof of the Milnor conjecture. Conjectural in general, this principle is useful in determining when motivic decompositions obey Galois descent. After covering some preliminaries, I will give an overview of a new proof of this principle for surfaces over a perfect field.

Abstract: Science, and perhaps all learning, is the problem of inferring causal relationships from observations. It turns out that algebraic geometry can provide powerful intuition and methods applicable to causal inference. The relevant theory of graphical causal models is a major entry point to the budding field of algebraic statistics, where algebraic geometry meets statistical modeling, and this talk will give an introduction to it from the perspective of an algebraic geometer. I'll introduce some conceptual tools and methods that are peculiar to algebraic statistics, and work through an example such causal inference computation using the commutative algebra software Macaulay2. At the end I'll review some of my research on hidden Markov models and varieties, and their close connection to matrix product state models of quantum-entangled qubits.

I will explain some attempts to develop a theory of Schubert calculus on the affine Grassmannian. I will begin with the different descriptions of the (co)homology rings due to Bott, Kostant and Kumar, and Ginzburg. Then I will discuss the problems of finding polynomial representatives for Schubert classes and the explicit determination of structure constants in (co)homology.

The Hilbert scheme of n points on C^2 is a smooth manifold of dimension 2n. The topology and geometry of Hilbert schemes have important connections to physics, representation theory, and combinatorics. Hilbert schemes of points on C^2/G, for G a finite group, are also smooth, and their topology is encoded in the combinatorics of partitions. When G is a subgroup of SL_2, the topology and combinatorics of the situation are well understood, but much less is known for general G. After outlining the well-understood situation, I will discuss some conjectures in the general case, and a combinatorial proof that their homology stabilizes.

We give a new proof of Bogomolov's instability theorem. Furthermore we prove that it is equivalent to a statement which characterizes when the first cohomology group of a big divisor does not vanish.

The perturbation theory of linear operators has a long history. Introduced by Rayleigh in the 1870's, it was used for the first time in quantum mechanics in an article by Schrödinger published in 1926. The mathematical study of the perturbation theory of self-adjoint operators was initiated by Rellich in 1937, and has been since then the matter of a large number of contributions in the mathematical literature.

Perturbation theory of nonlinear operators plays a key role in quantum physics and chemistry, where it is used in particular to compute the response properties of molecular systems to external electromagnetic fields (polarizability, hyperpolarizability, magnetic susceptibility, NMR shielding tensor, optical rotation, ...) within the framework of mean-field models.

In this talk, I will recall the basics of linear perturbation linear, present some recent theoretical results [1] on nonlinear perturbation theory, and show how this approach can be also used to speed-up numerical simulations [2,3] and compute effective a posteriori error bounds.

[1] E. Cancès and N. Mourad, A mathematical perspective on density functional perturbation theory, Nonlinearity 27 (2014) 1999-2034.
[2] E. Cancès, G. Dusson, Y. Maday, B. Stamm and M. Vohralik, A perturbation-method-based a posteriori estimator for the planewave discretization of nonlinear Schrödinger equations, CRM 352 (2014) 941-946.
[3] E. Cancès, G. Dusson, Y. Maday, B. Stamm and M. Vohralik, A perturbation-method-based post-processing for the planewave discretization of Kohn-Sham models, in preparation.

In certain situations global topology may force singularities. For example, the topology of the Klein bottle forces self-intersections when mapped into 3-space. Any map of the projective plane must have at least cusp singularities when mapped into the plane. The topology of a manifold may force any differential form on it to degenerate at certian points. In a family of vector bundles over a complex curve some must degenerate to a non-stable bundle (in the GIT sense), depending on the topology of the family. In a family of vector bundle maps---arranged according to a directed graph (quiver)---some may be forced to degenerate. In families of linear spaces some have special incidence with some other fixed ones (Schubert calculus). These degenerations are governed by a unified notion in equivariant cohomology, the Thom polynomial of "singularities". In the lecture I will review Thom polynomials, computational strategies (interpolation, localization, Grobner basis), show examples and applications.

Chow groups give functors from algebraic varieties to abelian groups which are related to (co)homology. However Chow groups frequently contain more information than (co)homology. The construction of Chow groups is easy. Their computation is often difficult. This talk has two aims. First of all it will serve as an introduction to Chow groups which should be accessible to those who have taken a one semester course in Riemann surfaces, two semesters of algebraic topology, and have a passing acquaintance with affine and projective algebraic varieties. (One month in an algebraic geometry course may suffice for the latter.) Given that the next two talks in the algebraic geometry seminar will discuss various aspects of Chow groups, this talk may function as a warm up. The second aim is to introduce Bloch's conjecture on the Chow group of zero dimensional algebraic cycles on a non-singular projective surface. Throughout the talk one may assume that the base field is the complex numbers.