Algebra / Number Theory / Combinatorics Seminar

The famous primitive element theorem states that every number field K is of the form Q(a) for some element a in K, called a primitive element. In fact, it is […]

Imagine the hands on a clock.  For every complete the minute hand makes, the seconds hand makes 60, while the hour hand only goes one twelfth of the way.   […]

For a finite group G, a G-module M, and a field F, an element u in H^d(G,M) is negligible over F if for each field extension L/F and every continuous group homomorphism from Gal(L^{sep}/L) to G, u is in the kernel of the induced homomorphism H^d(G,M) to H^d(L,M). Negligible cohomology was first introduced by Serre […]

What are the possible angles between two integer vectors in R^n? If we fix one such possible angle and one integer vector x, is there always another integer vector y […]

In order to understand a topological space X, it is often easier to understand X in terms of an action by a group G. When X is a compact complex manifold, we often let G be products of S^1 or \C^* acting in a nice way ("holomorphically") on X. This simplifies several calculations of an […]

Biquandle module enhancements are invariants of knots and links generalizing the classical Alexander module invariant. A quiver categorification of these invariants was introduced in 2020. In this work-in-progress (joint with Yewon Joung from Hanyang University in Seoul) we take the next step by defining invariant quiver representations. As an application we obtain new polynomial knot […]

A modification of the cellular resolution of the diagonal given by Bayer-Popescu-Sturmfels gives a virtual resolution of the diagonal for smooth projective toric varieties and toric Deligne-Mumford stacks which are a global quotient of a smooth projective variety by a finite abelian group. In the past year, Hanlon-Hicks-Lazarev gave a minimal resolution of the diagonal […]

Around 20 years ago, physicists Michael Faux and Jim Gates invented Adinkras as a way to better understand Supersymmetry.  These are bipartite graphs whose vertices represent bosons and fermions and whose edges represent operators which relate the particles.  Recently, Charles Doran, Kevin Iga, Jordan Kostiuk, Greg Landweber and Stefan M\'{e}ndez-Diez determined that Adinkras are a […]

​I will introduce two general problems and explain how they surprisingly connect with each other and with other aspects of mathematics (for a glimpse, Sato—Tate, hypergeometric functions, moduli spaces of […]

In the field of commutative algebra, the principal object of study is (unsurprisingly) commutative algebras. A somewhat unintuitive fact is that results about commutative algebras can be gleaned from an […]

In this talk, we explore sequences and their autocorrelation functions. Knowing the autocorrelation function of a sequence is equivalent to knowing the magnitude of its Fourier transform.  Resolving the lack of phase information is called the phase problem.  We say that two sequences are equicorrelational to mean that they have the same aperiodic autocorrelation function.  […]

The classical Noether-Lefschetz Theorem states that a suitably general algebraic surface S of degree d ≥ 4 in complex projective 3-space P3 contains no curves besides complete intersections, that is, […]