Chad Schoen : A family of surfaces constructed from genus 2 curves
- Algebraic Geometry ( 198 Views )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.
John Swallow : Galois module structure of Galois cohomology
- Algebraic Geometry ( 183 Views )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.
Patricia Hersh : Topology and combinatorics of regular CW complexes
- Algebraic Geometry ( 164 Views )Anders Björner characterized which finite, graded partially ordered sets (posets) are closure posets of finite, regular CW complexes, and he also observed that a finite, regular CW complex is homeomorphic to the order complex of its closure poset. One might therefore hope to use combinatorics to determine topological structure of stratified spaces by studying their closure posets; however, it is possible for two different CW complexes with very different topological structure to have the same closure poset if one of them is not regular. I will talk about a new criterion for determining whether a finite CW complex is regular (with respect to a choice of characteristic functions); this will involve a mixture of combinatorics and topology. Along the way, I will review the notions from topology and combinatorics we will need. Finally I will discuss an application: the proof of a conjecture of Fomin and Shapiro, a special case of which says that the Schubert cell decomposition of the totally nonnegative part of the space of upper triangular matrices with 1's on the diagonal is a regular CW complex homeomorphic to a ball.
Jayce Getz : Hilbert modular generating functions with coefficients in intersection homology
- Algebraic Geometry ( 162 Views )In a seminal Inventiones 1976 paper, Hirzebruch and Zagier produced a set of cycles on certain Hilbert modular surfaces whose intersection numbers are the Fourier coefficients of elliptic modular forms with nebentypus. Their result can be viewed as a geometric manifestation of the Naganuma lift from elliptic modular forms to Hilbert modular forms. We discuss a general analogue of this result where the real quadratic extension is replaced by an arbitrary quadratic extension of totally real fields. Our result can be viewed as a geometric manifestation of quadratic base change for GL_2 over totally real fields. (joint work with Mark Goresky).
Thomas Lam : First steps in affine Schubert calculus
- Algebraic Geometry ( 156 Views )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.
Eric Cances : Perturbation of nonlinear self-adjoint operators - Theory and applications
- Algebraic Geometry ( 144 Views )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.
Chad Schoen : Chow groups, an introduction
- Algebraic Geometry ( 140 Views )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.
Seth Baldwin : Positivity in T-equivariant K-theory of flag varieties associated to Kac-Moody groups
- Algebraic Geometry ( 133 Views )The cohomology rings of flag varieties have long been known to exhibit positivity properties. One such property is that the structure constants of the Schubert basis with respect to the cup product are non-negative. Brion (2002) and Anderson-Griffeth-Miller (2011) have shown that positivity extends to K-theory and T-equivariant K-theory, respectively. In this talk I will discuss recent work (joint with Shrawan Kumar) which generalizes these results to the case of Kac-Moody groups.
Humberto Diaz : On Chow groups of Varieties
- Algebraic Geometry ( 125 Views )For a complex algebraic variety, the Chow group is a geometric invariant which is easy to construct but often difficult to compute. In this talk, I will describe the construction of the Chow group, give some key examples and discuss some difficult open questions. I will also present a result about the Chow group of 0-cycles of the surface which parametrizes lines on a cubic 3-fold.
Michael Griffin : On the distribution of Moonshine and the Umbral Moonshine conjectures.
- Algebraic Geometry ( 115 Views )Monstrous Moonshine asserts that the coefficients of the modular j-function are given in terms of ''dimensions'' of virtual character for the Monster group. There are 194 irreducible representations of the Monster, the largest of the sporadic simple groups, and it has been a longstanding open problem to determine their distribution in Moonshine. Witten and others have demonstrated deep connections between Monstrous Moonshine and quantum physics. The distributions of the Monster representations in Moonshine can be interpreted as the distributions of black hole states in 3 dimensional quantum gravity. In joint work with Ono and Duncan, we obtain exact formulas for these distributions. Moonshine type-phenomena have been observed for other finite simple groups besides the Monster. The Umbral Moonshine conjectures of Cheng, Duncan, and Harvey asserts that the Moonshine extends to 24 isomorphism classes of even unimodular positive-definite rank 24 lattices. Monstrous Moonshine can be regarded as the case of the Leech lattice. In 2013, Gannon proved the case for the Mathieu group M24. We offer a method of proof for the remaining 22 cases.
Richard Schoen : An optimal eigenvalue problem and minimal surfaces in the ball
- Algebraic Geometry ( 102 Views )We consider the spectrum of the Dirichlet-Neumann map. This is the spectrum of the operator which sends a function on the boundary of a domain to the normal derivative of its harmonic extension. Along with the Dirichlet and Neumann spectrum, this problem has been much studied. We show how the problem of finding domains with fixed boundary area and largest first eigenvalue is connected to the study of minimal surfaces in the ball which meet the boundary orthogonally (free boundary solutions). We describe some conjectures on optimal surfaces and some progress toward their resolution. This is joint work with Ailana Fraser.