RUTGERS ALGEBRA SEMINAR - Fall 2011

The Algebra Seminar meets on Wednesdays, at 2:00-3:00PM in room H525
         (in the Hill Center, on Busch Campus of Rutgers University).
A '(C)' marks a related Colloquium Talk at 4:00 PM on a Friday.
A more comprehensive listing of all Math Department seminars is available.
Spring 2012 Seminars (Wednesdays at 2:00 in H525)
 
25 Jan Vasily Dolgashev  Temple Univ. "Exhausting quantization procedures"
 8 Feb Chuck Weibel Rutgers       "Shift Equivalence and Z[t]-modules"
15 Feb Pablo Pelaez Rutgers	  "An introduction to weights"
22 Feb Anders Buch  Rutgers	  "Littlewood-Richardson and miniscule varieties"
29 Feb Julia Plavnik Cordoba, Argentina
 7 Mar Anastasia Stavrova or Lev Borisov
14 Mar no seminar	-------------- Spring Break ------------- 
21 Mar Mark Walker  U. Nebraska   "Invariants of Matrix Factorizations"
28 Mar
 4 Apr
11 Apr
18 Apr
25 Apr

Spring 2012 Semester starts Jan. 17, Classes end April 30,
Spring Break is March 11-18, Exams start May 3.
Fall 2011 Seminars (Wednesdays at 2:00PM in H423)
14 Sept Charles Siegel  U. Penn.  "The Schottky Problem and genus 5 curves"
28 Sept Abid Ali        Rutgers   "Congruence subgrous of lattices in rank 2 Kac-Moody groups over finite fields" 
 5 Oct Raika Dehy  Cergy-Pontoise "Cluster algebras and categorification" 
12 Oct Chuck Weibel    Rutgers    "What (besides varieties) are motivic spaces?"
19 Oct Raika Dehy  Cergy-Pontoise "Cluster algebras and categorification (bis)"
26 Oct Anders Buch     Rutgers    "Giambelli formulas for orthogonal Grassmannians"
 2 Nov Alice Rizzardo  Columbia   "On Fourier-Mukai type functors"
 9 Nov Changlong Zhong  Ottowa    "Comparison of Dualizing Complexes"
16 Nov Anastasia Stavrova U.Essen "The Serre-Grothendieck conjecture on torsors and the
                                    classification of simple algebraic groups"
23 Nov no seminar, no classes		    (Thanksgiving week)
30 Nov Lev Borisov     Rutgers    "Elliptic functions and equations of modular curves"
 7 Dec Pablo Pelaez    Rutgers    "Homotopical Methods in Algebraic Geometry"
Fall 2011 Semester starts Sept.1; (Thursday Sept.8 will be Monday classes).
Classes end Tues, Dec. 13; Final Exams start Friday 12/16/11

Here is a link to the algebra seminars in previous semesters


Spring 2011 Seminars
(Wednesdays at 2 PM in CoRE 431)
21 Jan Chenyang Xu    Princeton    Colloquium talk (Friday)
26 Jan Grigor Sargsyan UCLA        TBA (Monday Jan. 24)
28 Jan Ivan Losev     MIT          Colloquium talk (Friday)
 4 Feb A. Salehi Golsefidy Princeton Colloquium talk (Friday)
 9 Feb Louis Rowen    Bar Ilan U.  "Tropical Algebra"
16 Feb no seminar
23 Feb Christian Haesemeyer UCLA "Rational points, zero cycles of degree one, and A^1-homotopy theory"
 2 Mar Volodia Retakh  Rutgers    "Linear recursive sequences, Laurent phenomenon and Dynkin diagrams"
 9 Mar Chuck Weibel    Rutgers    "Monoid algebras and monoid schemes"
16 Mar no seminar	-------------- Spring Break ------------- 
30 Mar Volodia Retakh  Rutgers    "Hilbert series of algebras associated to direct graphs and order homology"
 6 Apr Lev Borisov     Rutgers    "Syzygies of binomial ideals and toric Eisenbud-Goto conjecture"
13 Apr Crichton Ogle   Ohio State "Cyclic homology, simplicial rapid decay algebras, and applications to K*t(l¹(G))"
20 Apr Susan Durst     Rutgers    "Twisted Polynomial Rings and Embeddings of the Free Algebra"
27 Apr Chuck Weibel    Rutgers    "Derived categories of graded modules"
 4 May
Spring Finals are May 5-11; last day of classes is May 2 (Monday)

Abstracts of seminar talks

Spring 2012

Exhausting quantization procedures (Vasily Dolgashev, Jan. 25, 2012):
Deformation quantization is a procedure which assigns a formal deformation of the associative algebra of functions on a variety to a Poisson structure on this variety. Such a procedure can be obtained from Kontsevich's formality quasi-isomorphism and, it is known that, there are many homotopy inequivalent formality quasi-isomorphisms. I propose a framework in which all homotopy classes of formality quasi-isomorphisms can be described. More precisely, I will show that homotopy classes of "stable" formality quasi-isomorphisms form a torsor for the group exp(H°(GC)), where GC denotes the full graph complex. The group exp(H°(GC)) is isomorphic to the Grothendieck-Teichmueller group which is, in turn, related to moduli of curves and to theory of motives.

Shift Equivalence and Z[t]-modules (Chuck Weibel, February 8, 2012):
Shift equivalence is an equivalence relation on nxn matrices (say over Z). Such a matrix T may be regarded as defining a Z[t]-module structure on a free abelian group, and shift equivalence translates into the assertion that the modules become isomorphic over Z[t,1/t]. This talk is a description of a weaker equivalence relation related to class groups of number fields.

Invariants of Matrix Factorizations (Mark Walker, November 30, 2012):
Given, for example, a polynomial f(x_1,...,x_n) with complex coefficients, a matrix factorization of f is a pair of r x r matrices of polynomials (A, B) satisfying AB = f I_r = BA. Introduced over 30 years ago by Eisenbud in the context of studying projective resolutions of modules over hyper-surfaces, there has been a revival of interest in matrix factorizations lately, as connections with mathematical physics and knot theory have emerged. I will discuss some recent progress in understanding certain fundamental invariants of matrix factorizations.

Fall 2011

The Schottky Problem and genus 5 curves (Charles Siegel, Sept. 14, 2011):
The relationship between algebraic curves and abelian varieties has a long and classical history. One of the most fundamental open problems is determining when an abelian variety is the Jacobian of some curve. We will discuss some of the history of the problem, as well as new results in the case of genus 5 curves.

Congruence subgrous of lattices in rank 2 Kac-Moody groups over finite fields (Abid Ali, Sept. 28, 2011):
Let G be a complete Kac-Moody group of rank 2 over a finite field, and let B— denote the non-uniform lattice subgroup generated by the "diagonal subgroup" and all negative real root groups. We define and construct congruence subgroups of B—. This is joint work with Lisa Carbone.

Cluster algebras and combinatorics of rigid objects in 2 Calabi-Yau categories (Raika Dehy, October 4 and 18, 2011):
This talk is motivated by the representation-theoretic approach to Fomin-Zelevinsky's cluster algebras. In this approach a central role is played by certain 2-Calabi-Yau categories and by combinatorial invariants associated with their rigid objects (objects with no self-extensions).

I shall recall the definition of cluster algebras and how to construct the cluster categories associated with them (the latter are 2-Calabi-Yau categories). Then I will introduce the combinatorial invariant that will help prove part of the conjectures on g-vectors associated to cluster variables.

Giambelli formulas for orthogonal Grassmannians (Anders Buch, October 26, 2011):
Let X be an orthogonal Grassmannian, defined as the set of all isotropic subspaces of a given dimension in a complex vector space equipped with an orthogonal bilinear form. The cohomology ring H^*(X) has a basis consisting of Schubert classes; products of these classes have applications in enumerative geometry and are the main objects of study in Schubert calculus. The cohomology ring H^*(X) can also be understood in terms of generators and relations, where the generators are certain special Schubert classes. A Giambelli formula means an expression of an arbitrary Schubert class as a polynomial in special Schubert classes. The Schubert classes of an ordinary Grassmann variety can be expressed as determinants of matrices of special Schubert classes, and the Schubert classes of a maximal orthogonal Grassmannian can be written as Pfaffians. I will speak about new Giambelli formulas for submaximal orthogonal Grassmannians that is expressed in terms of raising operators and interpolate between the above cases. This is joint work with A. Kresch and H. Tamvakis.

On Fourier-Mukai type functors (Alice Rizzardo, November 2, 2011):
Orlov showed in 1997 that all exact, fully faithful functors between the bounded derived categories of two smooth projective varieties are isomorphic to a Fourier-Mukai transform. In this talk we will discuss a class of functors that are not full or faithful and still satisfy the above result.

Comparison of Dualizing Complexes (Changlong Zhong, November 9, 2011):
In this talk I will introduce four dualizing complexes defined by M. Spiess, T. Moser, S. Bloch (duality proved by T. Geisser) and K. Sato, and compare them in the derived category. We show that Bloch's complex is quasi-isomorphic with all three, in the situation when they are properly defined (and assuming some well-known conjectures).

Homotopical Methods in Algebraic Geometry (Pablo Pelaez, November 30, 2011):
Algebraic Topology and Algebraic Geometry throughout the years have shared common methods and enriched each other. The work of Morel-Voevodsky gives a natural categorical framework to import some standard methods from homotopy theory into algebraic geometry. The aim of this talk is to describe some concrete examples.

Spring 2011

Syzygies of binomial ideals and toric Eisenbud-Goto conjecture (Lev Borisov, April 6, 2011):
Let p1,...,pk be a collection of points with integer coordinates. Denote their convex hull by Δ. For every integer n consider the subset inside the multiple nΔ which consists of lattice points that can be written as sums of n of the pi. Typically, some lattice points of nΔ will be missing from this set. The toric Eisenbud-Goto conjecture gives a certain measure of control over the sets of missing points. I will give an elementary introduction to the conjecture, which is still open for the case of six points on the plane.

Cyclic homology, simplicial rapid decay algebras, and applications to K*t(l¹(G))
(Crichton Ogle, April 13, 2011):

Using techniques developed for studying polynomially bounded cohomology, we show that the assembly map for K*t(l¹(G)) is rationally injective for all finitely presented discrete groups G. This verifies the l¹-analogue of the Strong Novikov Conjecture for such groups. The same methods show that the Strong Novikov Conjecture for all finitely presented groups can be reduced to proving a certain (conjectural) rigidity of the topological cyclic chain complex CC*t(HCM(F)) where F is a finitely-generated free group and HCM(F) is the "maximal" Connes-Moscovici algebra associated to F.

Rational points, zero cycles of degree one, and A^1-homotopy theory (Christian Haesemeyer, Feb. 16, 2011):
A system of polynomial equations over a field F may have solutions in a collection of finite field extensions of relatively prime degree, but not have any solution in F. We will describe some examples and results known about this phenomenon, and then talk about what A^1-homotopy theory might contribute to understanding it.


Charles Weibel / weibel @ math.rutgers.edu / December 1, 2011