Donaldson proved that there are pairs of 4-manifolds that are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic, a phenomenon that does not appear for any lower dimensional manifolds. Until recently, proving this for compact manifolds has required smooth 4-manifold invariants coming from gauge theory. In this talk, we will give an introduction to an exciting new smooth 4-manifold invariant of Morrison Walker and Wedich, called a skein lasagna module that does not rely on gauge theory. Further, this talk will not assume any knowledge of 4-manifold topology.

A base-g Niven number is an integer divisible by the sum of its digits in base-g. We show that any sufficiently large integer can be written as the sum of three base-3 Niven numbers, and comment on the extension to other bases. This is an application of the circle method, which we use to count the number of ways an integer can be written as the sum of three integers with fixed, near-average, digit sum. 

The large sieve inequality for Dirichlet characters is a central result in analytic number theory, which encodes a strong orthogonality property between primitive characters of varying conductors. This can be viewed as a statement about $\mathrm{GL}_1$ automorphic representations, and it is a key open problem to prove similar results in the higher $\mathrm{GL}_m$ setting; for $m \ge 2$, our best bounds are far from optimal. We'll outline two approaches to such results (sketching them first in the elementary case of Dirichlet characters), and discuss work-in-progress of Thorner and the author on an improved $\mathrm{GL}_m$ large sieve. No prior knowledge of automorphic representations will be assumed.

A generalisation of Wiles’ famous modularity theorem, the Fontaine-Mazur conjecture, predicts that two dimensional representations of the absolute Galois group of the rationals, with a few specific properties, exactly correspond to those representations coming from classical modular forms. Under some mild hypotheses, this is now a theorem of Kisin. In this talk, I will explain how one can p-adically interpolate the objects on both sides of this correspondence to construct an eigensurface and “trianguline” Galois deformation space, as well as outline a new approach to proving a theorem of Emerton, that these spaces are often isomorphic.

The class of henselian valued fields with non-discrete value group is not well-understood. In 2018, Koenigsmann conjectured that a list of seven natural axioms describes a complete axiomatisation of $\mathbb{Q}_p^{ab}$, the maximal extension of the $p$-adic numbers $\mathbb{Q}_p$ with abelian Galois group, which is an example of such a valued field. Informed by the recent work of Jahnke-Kartas on the model theory of perfectoid fields, we formulate an eighth axiom (the discriminant property) that is not a consequence of the other seven. Revisiting work by Koenigsmann (the Galois characterisation of $\mathbb{Q}_p$) and Jahnke-Kartas, we give a uniform treatment of their underlying method. In particular, we highlight how this method yields short, non-standard model-theoretic proofs of known results (e.g. finite extensions of perfectoid fields are perfectoid).

Numerically solving PDEs typically requires compressing infinite information into a finite system of algebraic equations. Pragmatically, we usually follow a recipe: “Assume solutions of form X; substitute into PDE Y; discard terms by rule Z.” In contrast, Lanczos’s pioneering “tau method” prescribes modifying the PDE to form an exact finite system. Crucially, any recipe-based method can be viewed as adding a small equation correction, enabling us to compare multiple schemes independently of the solver. 

This talk also addresses a paradox: PDEs often admit infinitely many solutions, but finite systems produce only a finite set. When we include a “small” correction, the missing solutions are effectively hidden. I will discuss how tau methods frame this perspective and outline proposals for systematically studying and optimising various residuals.