“Galois theory for transcendental numbers”

Julian Rosen, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

Galois groups are very useful for studying algebraic numbers. The theory doesn’t work so well for transcendental numbers, because at the level of abstract fields all transcendental numbers look the same. There is a class of complex numbers called periods, which are numbers that ”arise from algebra”. Despite typically being transcendental, periods have lots of algebraic structure. In this talk, I will outline a (still conjectural) Galois theory of periods, and discuss some applications.

MC 5403