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Welcome to Pure Mathematics

We are home to 30 faculty, four staff, approximately 60 graduate students, several research visitors, and numerous undergraduate students. We offer exciting and challenging programs leading to BMath, MMath and PhD degrees. We nurture a very active research environment and are intensely devoted to both ground-breaking research and excellent teaching.


News

More than 100 researchers and students from across Canada and around the world attended the 53rd annual Canadian Operator Algebras Symposium (COSY), which took place from May 26-30 at the University of Waterloo.

Events

Thursday, June 19, 2025 1:00 pm - 2:15 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Differential Geometry Working Seminar

Justin Fus, University of Waterloo

The Geometry of the Based Loop Group and Moment Maps

Given a compact Lie group, we will explore a symplectic structure on the infinite-dimensional based loop group consisting of smooth maps from the circle to the Lie group with the identity as a basepoint. The maximal torus of the Lie group and the circle group together generate a Hamiltonian torus action on the loop group. Results on connectedness of level sets and convexity of the moment map, which are attempts to generalize those for finite-dimensional compact symplectic manifolds, will be previewed.

MC 5403

Thursday, June 19, 2025 2:30 pm - 3:45 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Differential Geometry Working Seminar

Spiro Karigiannis, University of Waterloo

Unique continuation in geometry (conclusion)

I will finish discussing the paper by Jerry Kazdan on unique continuation in geometry. I will try to make this second talk self-contained, by stating the various estimates which we derived in my first talk, and continuing the proof from there.

MC 5403

Friday, June 20, 2025 11:45 am - 12:45 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

PhD Defence

Nicole Kitt, University of Waterloo

Characterizing Cofree Representations of SL_n x SL_m

The study, and in particular classification, of cofree representations has been an interest of research for over 70 years. The Chevalley-Shepard Todd Theorem provides a beautiful intrinsic characterization for cofree representations of finite groups. Specifically, this theorem says that a representation V of a finite group G is cofree if and only if G is generated by pseudoreflections. Up until the late 1900s, with the exception of finite groups, all of the existing classifications of cofree representations of a particular group consist of an explicit list, as opposed to an intrinsic group-theoretic characterization. However, in 2019, Edidin, Satriano, and Whitehead formulated a conjecture which intrinsically characterizes stable irreducible cofree representations of connected reductive groups and verified their conjecture for simple Lie groups. The conjecture states that for a stable irreducible representation V of a connected reductive group G, V is cofree if and only if V is pure. In comparison to the classifications comprised of a list of cofree representations, this conjecture can be viewed as an analogue of the Chevalley–Shepard–Todd Theorem for actions of connected reductive groups. The aim of this thesis is to further expand upon the techniques formulated by Edidin, Satriano, and Whitehead as a means to work towards the verification of the conjecture for all connected semisimple Lie groups. The main result of this thesis is the verification of the conjecture for stable irreducible representations V\otimes W of SL_n x SL_m satisfying dim V>=n^2 and dim W>=m^2.