14:15
Stability conditions for line bundles on nodal curves
Abstract
Mathematicians have been interested in the problem of compactifying the Jacobian variety of curves since the mid XIX century. In this talk we will discuss how all 'reasonable' compactified Jacobians of nodal curves can be classified combinatorically. This suffices to obtain a combinatorial classification of all 'reasonable' compactified universal (over the moduli spaces of stable curves) Jacobians. This is a joint work with Orsola Tommasi.
Elliptic curves and modularity
Abstract
The goal of this talk is to give you a glimpse of the Langlands program, a central topic at the intersection of algebraic number theory, algebraic geometry and representation theory. I will focus on a celebrated instance of the Langlands correspondence, namely the modularity of elliptic curves. In the first part of the talk, I will give an explicit example, discuss the different meanings of modularity for rational elliptic curves, and mention applications. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss what is known about the modularity of elliptic curves over more general number fields.
Some nihilism for the weekend courtesy of one of the first recordings made by the original Buzzcocks line-up on 28th December 1976. Given that boredom was one of the themes of punk's 'rebellion', including against the 'boring' 15 minute album tracks of the time, you might think this fitted perfectly. But in fact it is about boredom with the punk movement itself even though it was only a few months old in the UK.
The guitar solo features two notes repeated 66 times.
15:30
Compact Brownian surfaces
Please join us from 1500-1530 for tea and coffee outside the lecture theatre before the talk.
Abstract
We describe the compact scaling limits of uniformly random quadrangulations with boundaries on a surface of arbitrary fixed genus. These limits, called Brownian surfaces, are homeomorphic to the surface of the given genus with or without boundaries depending on the scaling regime of the boundary perimeters of the quadrangulation. They are constructed by appropriate gluings of pieces derived from Brownian geometrical objects (the Brownian plane and half-plane). In this talk, I will review their definition and discuss possible alternative constructions. This is based on joint work with Jérémie Bettinelli.