6d N=(2,0) superconformal field theories have natural surface operators similar in many ways to Wilson lines in gauge theories. In this talk, I will discuss how they can be studied using conformal bootstrap techniques, including connection to W-algebras and the so-called inversion formula, focusing on the limit of large central charge.

The Iwasawa main conjecture, first developed in the 1960s and later generalised to a modular forms setting, is the prediction that algebraic and analytic constructions of a p-adic L-function agree. This has applications towards the Birch—Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture and many similar problems. This was proved by Kato (’04) and Skinner—Urban (’06) for ordinary modular forms. Progress in the non-ordinary setting is much more recent, requiring tools from p-adic Hodge theory and rigid analytic geometry. I aim to give an overview of this and discuss a new approach in the setting of unitary groups where even more things go wrong.

The study of cohomology of infinite-dimensional Lie algebras was started by Gel'fand and Fuchs in the late 1960s. Since then, significant progress has been made, mainly focusing on the Witt algebra (the Lie algebra of vector fields on the punctured affine line) and some of its subalgebras. In this talk, I will explain the basics of Lie algebra cohomology and sketch the computation of the first cohomology group of certain subalgebras of the Witt algebra known as submodule-subalgebras. Interestingly, these cohomology groups are, in some sense, controlled by the cohomology of the Witt algebra. This can be explained by the fact that the Witt algebra can be abstractly reconstructed from any of its submodule-subalgebras, which can be described as a universal property satisfied by the Witt algebra.