Cambridge

Moduli spaces of polarised varieties (varieties together with an ample line bundle) are not Hausdorff in general. A basic goal of algebraic geometry is to construct a Hausdorff moduli space of some nice class of polarised varieties. I will discuss how one can achieve this goal using the theory of canonical Kähler metrics. In addition I will discuss some fundamental properties of this moduli space, for example the existence of a Weil-Petersson type Kähler metric. This is joint work with Philipp Naumann.

Costello Yamazaki and Witten have proposed a new understanding of quantum integrable systems coming from a variant of Chern-Simons theory living on a product of two Riemann surfaces. I’ll review their work, and show how it can be extended to the case of integrable systems with boundary. The boundary Yang-Baxter Equations, twisted Yangians and Sklyanin determinants all have natural interpretations in terms of line operators in the theory.

Teaching ethics to the mathematicians who need it most
For the last 20 years it has become increasingly obvious, and increasingly pressing, that mathematicians should be taught some ethical awareness so as to realise the impact of their work. This extends even to those more highly trained, like graduate students and postdocs. But which mathematicians should we be teaching this to, what should we be teaching them, and how should we do it? In this talk I’ll explore the idea that all mathematicians will, at some stage, be faced with ethical challenges stemming from their work, and yet few are ever told beforehand.
 

In the 1990s Moy and Prasad revolutionized the representation theory of p-adic groups by showing how to use Bruhat-Tits theory to assign invariants to representations of p-adic groups. The tools they introduced resulted in rapid advancements in both representation theory and harmonic analysis -- areas of central importance in the Langlands program. A crucial ingredient for many results is an explicit construction of (types for) representations of p-adic groups. In this talk I will indicate why, survey what constructions are known (no knowledge about p-adic groups assumed) and present recent developments based on a refinement of Moy and Prasad's invariants.​

We will examine how the various notions of partition regularity change as we change the ambient space. A typical question would be as follows. We say that the system of equations $Ax=b$, where $A$ is an integer matrix and $b$ is a (non-zero) integer vector, is partition regular if whenever the integers are finitely coloured there is a monochromatic vector $x$ with $Ax=b$. Rado proved that the system $Ax=b$ is partition regular if and only if it has a constant solution. What happens if the integers are replaced by the rationals, or the reals, or a more general ring? 

No previous knowledge of partition regularity is assumed. This is based on joint work with Paul Russell and joint work with Ben Barber, Neil Hindman and Dona Strauss.

Let $G$ be a regular graph of degree $d$ and let $A\subset V(G)$. Say that $A$ is $\eta$-closed if the average degree of the subgraph induced by $A$ is at least $\eta d$. This says that if we choose a random vertex $x\in A$ and a random neighbour $y$ of $x$, then the probability that $y\in A$ is at least $\eta$. In recent joint work with Tim Gowers, we were aiming to obtain a qualitative description of closed subsets of the Cayley graph $\Gamma$ whose vertex set is $\mathbb{F}_2^{n_1}\otimes \dots \otimes \mathbb{F}_2^{n_d}$ with two vertices joined by an edge if their difference is of the form $u_1\otimes \cdots \otimes u_d$. For the matrix case (that is, when $d=2$), such a description was obtained by Khot, Minzer and Safra, a breakthrough that completed the proof of the 2-to-2 conjecture. We have formulated a conjecture for higher dimensions, and proved it in an important special case. In this talk, I will sketch this proof. Also, we have identified a statement about $\eta$-closed sets in Cayley graphs on arbitrary finite Abelian groups that implies the conjecture and can be considered as a "highly asymmetric Balog-Szemerédi-Gowers theorem" when it holds. I will present an example to show that this statement is not true for an arbitrary Cayley graph. It remains to decide whether the statement can be proved for the Cayley graph $\Gamma$.

The celebrated localisation theorem of Beilinson-Bernstein asserts that there is an equivalence between representations of a Lie algebra and modules over the sheaf of differential operators on the corresponding flag variety. In this talk we discuss certain analogues of this result in various contexts. Namely, there is a localisation theorem for quantum groups due to Backelin and Kremnizer and, more recently, Ardakov and Wadsley also proved a localisation theorem working with certain completed enveloping algebras of p-adic Lie algebras. We then explain how to combine the ideas involved in these results to construct
a p-adic analytic quantum flag variety and a category of D-modules on it, and we show that the global section functor on these D-modules yields an equivalence of categories.

It is difficult to determine when a graph G can be edge-covered by edge-disjoint copies of a fixed graph F. That is, when it has an F-decomposition. However, if G is large and has a high minimum degree then it has an F-decomposition, as long as some simple divisibility conditions hold. Recent research allows us to prove bounds on the necessary minimum degree by studying a relaxation of this problem, where a fractional decomposition is sought.

I will show how a relatively simple random process can give a good approximation to a fractional decomposition of a dense graph, and how it can then be made exact. This improves the best known bounds for this problem.
 

Advances in manufacturing technologies, most prominently in additive manufacturing or 3d printing, are making it possible to fabricate highly optimised products with increasing geometric and hierarchical complexity. This talk will introduce our ongoing work on design optimisation that combines CAD-compatible geometry representations, multiresolution geometry processing techniques and immersed finite elements with classical shape and topology calculus. As example applications,the shape optimisation of mechanical structures and electromechanical components, and the topology optimisation of lattice-skin structures will be discussed.

When studying a group, it is natural and often useful to try to cut it up 
onto simpler pieces. Sometimes this can be done in an entirely canonical 
way analogous to the JSJ decomposition of a 3-manifold, in which the 
collection of tori along which the manifold is cut is unique up to isotopy. 
It is a theorem of Brian Bowditch that if the group acts nicely on a metric 
space with a negative curvature property then a canonical decomposition can 
be read directly from the large-scale geometry of that space. In this talk 
we shall explore an algorithmic consequence of this relationship between 
the large-scale geometry of the group and is algebraic decomposition.