Algebra and Algebraic Geometry Seminar Fall 2020
The Virtual Seminar will take place on Fridays at 2:30 pm via Zoom. We will also link to relevant or interesting Zoom talks outside of the seminar.
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COVID-19 Update
As a result of Covid-19, the seminar for this semester will be held virtually.
Fall 2020 Schedule
Abstracts
Andrei Căldăraru
Categorical Enumerative Invariants
I will talk about recent papers with Junwu Tu, Si Li, and Kevin Costello where we give a computable definition of Costello's 2005 invariants and compute some of them. These invariants are associated to a pair (A,s) consisting of a cyclic A∞-algebra and a choice of splitting s of its non-commutative Hodge filtration. They are expected to recover classical Gromov-Witten invariants when A is obtained from the Fukaya category of a symplectic manifold, as well as extend various B-model invariants (solutions of Picard-Fuchs equations, BCOV invariants, B-model FJRW invariants) when A is obtained from the derived category of a manifold or a matrix factorization category.
Dima Arinkin
Singular support of categories
In many situations, geometric objects on a space have some kind of singular support, which refines the usual support. For instance, for smooth X, the singular support of a D-module (or a perverse sheaf) on X is as a conical subset of the cotangent bundle; there is also a version of this notion for coherent sheaves on local complete intersections. I would like to describe a higher categorical version of this notion.
Let X be a smooth variety, and let Z be a closed conical isotropic subset of the cotangent bundle of X. I will define a 2-category associated with Z; its objects may be viewed as `categories over X with singular support in Z'. In particular, if Z is the zero section, this gives the notion of categories over Z in the usual sense.
The project is motivated by the local geometric Langlands correspondence; I will sketch the relation with the Langlands correspondence without going into details.
Aleksandra Sobieska
Toward Free Resolutions Over Scrolls
Free resolutions over the polynomial ring have a storied and active record of study. However, resolutions over other rings are much more mysterious; even simple examples can be infinite! In these cases, we look to any combinatorics of the ring to glean information. This talk will present a minimal free resolution of the ground field over the semigroup ring arising from rational normal $2$-scrolls, and (if time permits) a computation of the Betti numbers of the ground field for all rational normal $k$-scrolls.
Robert Scherer
A Criterion for Asymptotic Sharpness in the Enumeration of Simply Generated Trees
We study the identity $y(x)=xA(y(x))$, from the theory of rooted trees, for appropriate generating functions $y(x)$ and $A(x)$ with non-negative integer coefficients. A problem that has been studied extensively is to determine the asymptotics of the coefficients of $y(x)$ from analytic properties of the complex function $z\mapsto A(z)$, assumed to have a positive radius of convergence $R$. It is well-known that the vanishing of $A(x)-xA'(x)$ on $(0,R)$ is sufficient to ensure that $y(r)<R$, where $r$ is the radius of convergence of $y(x)$. This result has been generalized in the literature to account for more general functional equations than the one above, and used to determine asymptotics for the Taylor coefficients of $y(x)$. What has not been shown is whether that sufficient condition is also necessary. We show here that it is, thus establishing a criterion for sharpness of the inequality $y(r)\leq R$. As an application, we prove, and significantly extend, a 1996 conjecture of Kuperberg regarding the asymptotic growth rate of an integer sequence arising in the study of Lie algebra representations.
Shamgar Gurevich
Harmonic Analysis on GLn over Finite Fields
There are many formulas that express interesting properties of a finite group G in terms of sums over its characters. For estimating these sums, one of the most salient quantities to understand is the character ratio: Trace(ρ(g)) / dim(ρ), for an irreducible representation ρ of G and an element g of G. For example, Diaconis and Shahshahani stated a formula of the mentioned type for analyzing certain random walks on G. Recently, we discovered that for classical groups G over finite fields there is a natural invariant of representations that provides strong information on the character ratio. We call this invariant rank. Rank suggests a new organization of representations based on the very few “Small” ones. This stands in contrast to Harish-Chandra’s “philosophy of cusp forms”, which is (since the 60s) the main organization principle, and is based on the (huge collection) of “Large” representations. This talk will discuss the notion of rank for the group GLn over finite fields, demonstrate how it controls the character ratio, and explain how one can apply the results to verify mixing time and rate for random walks. This is joint work with Roger Howe (Yale and Texas A&M). The numerics for this work was carried with Steve Goldstein (Madison) and John Cannon (Sydney).
Ruijie Yang
TBA
Nadia Ott
The Supermoduli Space of Genus Zero SUSY Curves with Ramond Punctures
Super Riemann surfaces (SUSY curves) arise in the formulation of superstring theory, and their moduli spaces, called supermoduli space, are the integration spaces for superstring scattering amplitudes. I will focus specifically on genus zero SUSY curves. As with ordinary curves, genus zero SUSY curves present a certain challenge, as they have an infinitesimal group of automorphisms, and so in order for the moduli problem to be representable by a Deligne-Mumford superstack, we must introduce punctures. In fact, there are two kinds of punctures on a SUSY curve of Neveu-Schwarz or Ramond type. Neveu-Schwarz punctures are entirely analogous to the marked points in ordinary moduli theory. By contrast, the Ramond punctures are more subtle and have no ordinary analog. I will give a construction of the moduli space M_{0,n}^R of genus zero SUSY curves with Ramond punctures as a Deligne-Mumford superstack by an explicit quotient presentation (rather than by an abstract existence argument).
Reimundo Heluani
A Rogers-Ramanujan-Slater type identity related to the Ising model
We prove three new q-series identities of the Rogers-Ramanujan-Slater type. We find a PBW basis for the Ising model as a consequence of one of these identities. If time permits it will be shown that the singular support of the Ising model is a hyper-surface (in the differential sense) on the arc space of it's associated scheme. This is joint work with G. E. Andrews and J. van Ekeren and is available online at https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.10769