Talks

The notion of congruence (modulo an integer q) was formalised by C. F. Gauss in his Disquisitiones arithmeticae. This is a basic yet fundamental concept in all aspects of number theory. Indeed congruences allow to evaluate and compare integers in way considerably richer than the archimedean order alone permits.

In analytic number theory, several outstanding question -starting with Dirichlet’s theorem on primes in arithmetic progressions- reduce to the of measuring whether some classical arithmetic function (say the characteristic function of prime numbers) correlate with suitable q periodic functions for instance Gauss sums, Jacobi sums or Kloosterman sums. It turns out that these functions, when the modulus q is a prime (to which one can reduce via the Chinese Reminder Theorem) can be recognised as « trace functions». The study of trace functions was initiated by A. Weil in the 1940’s and was pursued by A. Grothendieck in the second half of the century with his refoundation of alge...

The theory of degree growth and algebraic entropy plays a crucial role in the field of discrete integrable systems. However, a general method for calculating degree growth for lattice equations (partial difference equations) is not yet known. In this talk, I will propose a new method to rigorously compute the exact degree of each iterate for lattice equations. The strategy is to extend Halburd's method, which is a novel approach to computing the exact degree of each iterate for mappings (ordinary difference equations) from the singularity structure, to lattice equations.

First, I will illustrate, without rigorous discussion, how to calculate degrees for lattice equations using the lattice version of Halburd's method and discuss what problems we need to solve to make the method rigorous. Then, I will provide a framework to ensure that all calculations are accurate and rigorous. If time permits, I would also like to discuss how to detect the singularity structure of a lattice equati...

Many interesting spaces arise as Coulomb branches of 3d N=4 quiver gauge theories, including nilpotent orbit closures and affine Grassmannian slices. These interesting spaces often admit interesting embeddings into one another. For example, one nilpotent orbit closure might be contained inside another. That said, it is much less clear how to describe or construct such an embedding from a purely Coulomb branch perspective. I will discuss joint work with Dinakar Muthiah, where we describe a natural Coulomb branch connection with Coulomb branches: for finite ADE types, the embeddings respect monopole operators thought of as functions on the Coulomb branch. This perspective also allows us to generalize the story, and construct embeddings for arbitrary quivers which have the same property.

I will present a universal numerical tool for identifying optimal adaptive metrological protocols in the presence of both uncorrelated and correlated noise [arXiv:2403.04854]. Leveraging a novel tensor network decomposition of quantum combs, the algorithm demonstrates efficiency even with a large number of channel uses (N=50). In the second part of the talk, I will explore the generalization of existing metrological upper bounds [Nat. Com. 3, 1063 (2012), PRL 131(9), 090801 (2023)] for correlated noise scenarios [arXiv:2410.01881].

Two-dimensional integrable lattice models that can be described in terms of (non-intersecting, possibly osculating) paths with suitable boundary conditions display the arctic phenomenon: the emergence of a sharp phase boundary between ordered cristalline phases (typically near the boundaries) and disordered liquid phases (away from them). We show how the so-called tangent method can be applied to models such as the 6 Vertex model or its triangular lattice variation the 20 Vertex model, to predict exact arctic curves. A number of companion combinatorial results are obtained, relating these problems to tiling problems of associated domains of the plane.

A system of hard rigid rods of length $k \gg1$ on hypercubic lattices in dimensions $d \geq2$, is known to undergo two phase transitions when chemical potential is increased: from a low-density phase to an intermediate density nematic phase, and on further increase to a high-density phase with no nematic order. I will present non-rigorous arguments to support the conjecture that for large $k$, the second phase transition is a first-order transition with a discontinuity in density in all dimensions greater than $1$. The chemical potential at the transition is $\approx A k \ln k$ for large $k$, and that the density of uncovered sites drops from a value $\approx B (\ln k)/ k^2$ , to a value of order $\exp(−ck)$, where $c$ is some constant, across the transition. We conjecture that these results are asymptotically exact, and $A = B= 1$, in all dimensions $d ≥ 2$.

In this series of lectures, I will give an introduction to the theory of moments of L-functions. I will focus on important examples, such as the moments of the Riemann zeta function and Dirichlet L-functions, as well as some GL_2 families. I will also present some of the important tools for understanding moments, as well as applications of moments.