C2

The Calabi conjecture, posed in 1954 and proved by Yau in 1976, guaranties the existence of Ricci-flat Kahler metrics on compact Kahler manifolds with vanishing first Chern class, providing examples of the so called Calabi-Yau manifolds. The latter are of great importance to the fields of Riemannian Holonomy Groups, having Hol0 as a subgroup of SU; Calibrated Geometry, more precisely Special Lagrangian Geometry; and to String theory with the discovery of the phenomenon of Mirror Symmetry (to mention a few!). In the talk, we will discuss the necessary background to formulate the Calabi conjecture and explain some of the main ideas behind its proof by Yau, which itself is a jewel from the point of view of non-linear PDEs.

We will discuss Raynaud's classical theory on Néron models of Jacobians of curves, and mention some tropical aspects of the theory that help us understand modular curves from a modern non-Archimedean viewpoint. There will be an annoyingly large number of examples illustrating the key principles throughout. 

Consider a nonsingular projective variety $X$ defined by a system of $R$ forms of the same degree $d$. The circle method proves the Hasse principle and Manin's conjecture for $X$ when $\text{dim}X > C(d,R)$. I will describe how to improve the value of $C$ when $R$ is large. I use a technique for estimating mean values of exponential sums which I call a ``moat lemma". This leads to a novel and intriguing system of auxiliary inequalities.

String algebras are tame - their finite-dimensional representations have been classified - and the Auslander-Reiten quiver of such an algebra shows some of the morphisms between them.  But not all.  To see the morphisms which pass between components of the Auslander-Reiten quiver, and so obtain a more complete picture of the category of representations, we should look at certain infinite-dimensional representations and use ideas and techniques from the model theory of modules.

This is joint work with Rosie Laking and Gena Puninski:
G. Puninski and M. Prest,  Ringel's conjecture for domestic string algebras, arXiv:1407.7470;
R. Laking, M. Prest and G. Puninski, Krull-Gabriel dimension of domestic string algebras, in preparation.