The plethysm product on symmetric functions corresponds to composition of polynomial representations of general linear groups. Decomposing a plethysm product into Schur functions, or equivalently, writing the corresponding composition of Schur functors as a direct sum of Schur functors, is one of the main open problems in algebraic combinatorics. I will give an introduction to these mathematical objects emphasising the beautiful interplay between representation theory and combinatorics. I will end with new results obtained in joint work with Rowena Paget (University of Kent) on stability on plethysm coefficients. No specialist background knowledge will be assumed.

Rational Cherednik algebra is a flat deformation of a skew product of the Weyl algebra and a Coxeter group W. I am going to discuss two interesting subalgebras of Cherednik algebras going back to the work of Hakobyan and the speaker from 2015. They are flat deformations of skew products of quotients of the universal enveloping algebras of gl_n and so_n, respectively, with W. They also have to do with particular nilpotent orbits and generalised Howe duality.  Their central quotients can be given as the algebra of global sections of sheaves of Cherednik algebras. The talk is partly based on a joint work with D. Thompson.

Let F be a p-adic local field and let G be a connected split reductive group over F. Let H be the pro-p Iwahori-Hecke algebra of the p-adic group G(F), with coefficients in an algebraically closed field k of characteristic p. The module theory over H (or a certain derived version thereof) is of considerable interest in the so-called mod p local Langlands program for G(F), whose aim is to relate the smooth modular representation theory of G(F) to modular representations of the absolute Galois group of F. In this talk, we explain a possible construction of a certain moduli space for those Galois representations into the Langlands dual group of G over k which are semisimple. We then relate this space to the geometry of H. This is work in progress with Cédric Pépin.

The usual approach to study 2d CFT relies on the Virasoro algebra and its representation theory. Moving away from the criticality, this infinite dimensional symmetry is lost so it is useful to have a look at 2d CFTs from the point of view of more general framework of quantum integrability. Every 2d conformal field theory has a natural infinite dimensional family of commuting higher spin conserved quantities that can be constructed out of Virasoro generators. Perhaps surprisingly two different sets of Bethe ansatz equations are known that diagonalise these. The first one is of Gaudin/Calogero type and was discovered by Bazhanov–Lukyanov–Zamolodchikov in the context of ODE/IM correspondence. The second set is a very natural generalisation of the Bethe ansatz for the Heisenberg XXX spin chain and was found more recently by Litvinov. I will discuss these constructions as well as their relation to W-algebras and the affine Yangian.

 Wide Neural Networks are well known for their Gaussian Process behaviour. Based upon this fact, an initialisation scheme for the weights and biases of a network preserving some geometrical properties of the input data is presented — The edge-of-chaos. This talk will introduce such a scheme before briefly mentioning a recent contribution related to the edge-of-chaos dynamics of wide randomly initialized low-rank feedforward networks. Formulae for the optimal weight and bias variances are extended from the full-rank to low-rank setting and are shown to follow from multiplicative scaling. The principle second order effect, the variance of the input-output Jacobian, is derived and shown to increase as the rank to width ratio decreases. These results inform practitioners how to randomly initialize feedforward networks with a reduced number of learnable parameters while in the same ambient dimension, allowing reductions in the computational cost and memory constraints of the associated network.

We begin with a seemingly simple question: how can one distinguish a surface group from other cyclic amalgamations of two free groups? This question will prompt a (geometrically flavoured) investigation of virtual homological properties of graphs of free groups amalgamated along cyclic edge groups, where surface subgroups play a key role. 

We next turn to study limit groups and residually free groups through their finite quotients, and apply our findings to the study of profinite rigidity within these classes of groups. In particular, we will sketch out why a direct product of free and surface groups cannot have the same finite quotients as any other finitely presented residually free group.

If time permits, we will discuss other possible characterizations of surface groups among limit groups. The talk is based on joint work with Ismael Morales.

The study of the fundamental group of an affine manifold has a long history that goes back to Hilbert’s 18th problem. It was asked if the fundamental group of a compact Euclidian affine manifold has a subgroup of a finite index such that every element of this subgroup is translation. The motivation was the study of the symmetry groups of crys- talline structures which are of fundamental importance in the science of crystallography. A natural way to generalize the classical problem is to broaden the class of allowed mo- tions and consider groups of affine transformations. In 1964, L. Auslander in his paper ”The structure of complete locally affine manifolds” stated the following conjecture, now known as the Auslander conjecture: The fundamental group of a compact complete locally flat affine manifold is virtually solvable.

In 1977, in his famous paper ”On fundamental groups of complete affinely flat manifolds”, J.Milnor asked if a free group can be the fundamental group of complete affine flat mani- fold.
The purpose of the talk is to recall the old and to talk about new results, methods and conjectures which are important in the light of these questions .

The talk is aimed at a wide audience and all notions will be explained 1

After a brief introduction to subject of spherical representations of hyperbolic groups, I will present a new construction motivated by a spectral formulation of the so-called Shalom conjecture.This a joint work with Dr Jan Spakula.

A parabolic representation of the free group  is one in which the images of both generators are parabolic elements of $PSL(2,\IC)$. The Riley slice is a closed subset ${\cal R}\subset \IC$ which is a model for the moduli space of parabolic, discrete and faithful representations. The complement of the Riley slice is a bounded Jordan domain within which there are isolated points, accumulating only at the boundary, corresponding to parabolic discrete and faithful representations of rigid subgroups of $PSL(2,\IC)$. Recent work of Aimi, Akiyoshi, Lee, Oshika, Parker, Lee, Sakai, Sakuma \& Yoshida, have topologically identified all these groups. Here we give the first  substantive properties of the nondiscrete representations using ergodic properties of the action of a polynomial semigroup and identifying the Riley slice as the ``Julia set’’ of this dynamical system. We prove a supergroup density theorem: given any irreducible parabolic representation of $F_2$ whatsoever, {\em any}  non-discrete parabolic representation has an arbitrarily small perturbation which contains that group as a conjugate.  Using these ideas we then show that there are nondiscrete parabolic representations with an arbitrarily large number of distinct Nielsen classes of parabolic generators.