Events - February 2023

Amador Martin-Pizarro, University of Freiburg

"Simplicity of the automorphism group of fields with operators"

Matilde Lalin, University of Montreal

"Sums of the divisor function and random matrix distributions"

The divisor function gives the number of positive divisors of a natural number. How can we go about understanding the behavior of this function when going over the natural numbers? In this talk we will discuss strategies to better understand this function, issues related to the distribution of these values, and connections to the Riemann zeta function and some groups of random matrices.

MC 5501

Thomas Brazelton, University of Pennsylvania

"Equivariant enumerative geometry"

Robert Cornea, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"A basic Introduction to Higgs Bundles and Vafa-Witten Bundles"

Sean Monahan, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"The effective cone for projective horospherical varieties"

I will start working through Brion’s paper “Variétés sphériques et théorie de Mori” on spherical MMP. Specifically, I plan to cover the first half of section 3, with emphasis on horospherical varieties. We should at least see what the cone NE(X) looks like for any projective horospherical variety X.

This seminar will be held jointly online and in person:

Rachael Alvir, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"Scott Complexity"

Yash Totani, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"Binary quadratic forms of class number 3"

Upon providing a historical overview of the theory of binary quadratic forms, we talk about the problem of representing positive integers by some specific binary quadratic forms. We will see how the theory of modular forms comes to our rescue.

MC 5403

Camila Sehnem, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"C*-envelopes and semigroup C*-algebras"

Rasul Shafikov, Western University

"Lagrangian embeddings, rational convexity, and approximation"

A celebrated theorem of Duval and Sibony characterizes rationally convex real submanifolds in complex Euclidean spaces as those isotropic with respect to a Kahler form. I will discuss how the results in symplectic geometry can be used to obtain some new results in the approximation theory.

MC 5417

Keke Zhang, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"An Introduction to Geometric Langlands"

We will begin with a discussion of the origin of the Langlands program in number theory, which is class field theory. Then we will give an introduction to the geometric Langlands conjecture. We will show Deligne's proof of the simplest case, which is the statement for GL(1).

This seminar will be held both online and in person:

Matthew Satriano, Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo

"Toric MMP"

I will discuss the minimal model program for toric varieties.

This seminar will be held jointly online and in person:

Ronnie Nagloo, University of Illinois at Chicago

"Geometric triviality in differentially closed fields"