C5

Compactifying topological actions using only de Rham forms fails to capture torsion sectors encoded in integral cohomology. Differential cohomology remedies this by combining integral characteristic classes, differential-form curvatures, and holonomy data into a single framework. In the context of deriving SymTFTs from M-theory, such a refinement is crucial for capturing background gauge fields for discrete 1-form global symmetries in the physical theory. In this talk, we will review the construction of differential cohomology and, time permitting, show how a refined Kaluza-Klein compactification leads to background gauge fields that encode these higher-form symmetries.

In this seminar, we consider an isoperimetric problem for planar tilings with possibly unequal repeating cells. We present general existence and regularity results, and we study the classification of planar isoperimetric double tilings, namely tilings with two repeating cells of minimal perimeter. In this case, we explicitly determine the associated energy profile and provide a complete description of the phase transitions. We also comment on possible extensions and discuss some open problems. This is based on joint work with M. Novaga and E. Paolini.

Given a cyclic subgroup G of GL(2,C) acting on C^2, it was first noticed by Wunram in the 80s that there is a correspondence between certain special representations of G and the exceptional curves appearing in the minimal resolution Y of the surface singularity C^2/G. In modern terms, this was reformulated by Ishii and Ueda as the existence of a fully faithful functor from the derived category of sheaves of Y to the G-equivariant derived category of C^2. In this talk, I will describe a mirror symmetric interpretation of this which exhibits the fully faithful inclusion in algebraic geometry as a sequence of positive Lefschetz stabilizations in symplectic geometry.

Any two 1 by 1 real matrices commute.  This is in general not the case for 2 by 2 real matrices.  However, if A, B, C, and D are any 2 by 2 real matrices, then ABCD - ABDC - ACBD + ACDB + ADBC - ADCB - BACD + BADC + BCAD - BCDA - BDAC + BDCA + CABD - CADB - CBAD + CBDA + CDAB - CDBA - DABC + DACB + DBAC - DBCA - DCAB + DCBA = 0.  This identity is the first instance of a general result of Amitsur and Levitski; I will explain a simple graph-theoretic proof due to Swan.

In this talk I will give a hopefully not too technical introduction to one of the techniques that allowed Taylor and Wiles to prove the modularity theorem that was the final step for proving Fermat's Last Theorem.
After explaining how the patching works, I will present some generalisations of the method to different contexts. If time permits, I will also briefly explain how patching was used to produce a candidate for the p-adic local Langlands correspondence.

We study two-dimensional characteristic free-boundary problems in ideal compressible magnetohydrodynamics. For current-vortex sheets, surface-wave effects yield derivative loss and only weak (neutral) stability; under a sufficient stability condition on the background state we obtain anisotropic weighted Sobolev energy estimates and prove local-in-time existence and nonlinear stability via a Nash-Moser scheme, confirming stabilization by strong magnetic fields against Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. For the plasma-vacuum interface, coupling hyperbolic MHD with elliptic pre-Maxwell dynamics, we establish local existence and uniqueness provided at least one magnetic field is nonzero along the initial interface.

In the talk, I'll first describe a more general context of Sárközy-type problems and interesting directions in which they can be pursued. Then, I'll focus on the specific case of bounding the size of sets A s. t. A - A + 1 contains no prime. After describing the progress on the problem for integers, I'll pass on to considering an analogous question for function fields and (after a general introduction to function fields) I'll speak about my recent result in this area.