Thu, 19 Feb 2009

17:00 - 18:00
L3

Some results on lovely pairs of geometric structures

Gareth Boxall
(Leeds)
Abstract

Let T be a (one-sorted first order) geometric theory (so T

has infinite models, T eliminates "there exist infinitely many" and

algebraic closure gives a pregeometry). I shall present some results

about T_P, the theory of lovely pairs of models of T as defined by

Berenstein and Vassiliev following earlier work of Ben-Yaacov, Pillay

and Vassiliev, of van den Dries and of Poizat. I shall present

results concerning superrosiness, the independence property and

imaginaries. As far as the independence property is concerned, I

shall discuss the relationship with recent work of Gunaydin and

Hieronymi and of Berenstein, Dolich and Onshuus. I shall also discuss

an application to Belegradek and Zilber's theory of the real field

with a subgroup of the unit circle. As far as imaginaries are

concerned, I shall discuss an application of one of the general

results to imaginaries in pairs of algebraically closed fields,

adding to Pillay's work on that subject.

Thu, 12 Feb 2009

17:00 - 18:00
L3

The geometries of the Hrushovski constructions.

Marco Ferreira
(East Anglia)
Abstract

In 1993 in his paper "A new strongly minimal set" Hrushovski produced a family of counter examples to a conjecture by Zilber. Each one of these counter examples carry a pregeometry. We answer a question by Hrushovski about comparing these pregeometries and their localization to finite sets. We first analyse the pregeometries arising from different variations of the construction before the collapse. Then we compare the pregeometries of the family of new strongly minimal structures obtained after the collapse.

Thu, 05 Feb 2009

17:00 - 18:00
L3

Fraïssé's construction from a topos-theoretic perspective

Olivia Caramello
(Cambridge)
Abstract

We present a topos-theoretic interpretation of (a categorical generalization of) Fraïssé's construction in Model Theory, with applications to countably categorical theories. The proof of our main theorem represents an instance of exploiting the interplay of syntactic, semantic and geometric ideas in the foundations of Topos Theory.

Thu, 05 Mar 2009
16:00
L3

Recent variants and applications of the arithmetic large sieve

Emmanuel Kowalski
(Zurich)
Abstract

The "large sieve" was invented by Linnik in order to attack problems involving the distribution of integers subject to certain constraints modulo primes, for which earlier methods of sieve theory were not suitable. Recently, the arithmetic large sieve inequality has been found to be capable of much wider application, and has been used to obtain results involving objects not usually considered as related to sieve theory. A form of the general sieve setting will be presented, together with sample applications; those may involve arithmetic properties of random walks on discrete groups, zeta functions over finite fields, modular forms, or even random groups.

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