Arithmetic, Motives and Moduli spaces

9-13th January 2012

Institut Henri Poincaré, Paris


Program

 

Monday         10.30am  Registration, coffee      11am    Heinloth         2pm  Nicaise         3.45pm   Laza                   5pm   Huber

Tuesday        9.30am    Habegger                     11am    Grushevsky      2pm Yafaev           3.45pm   Müller-Stach        5pm  Rössler

Wednesday    9.30am    Brown                         11am    Simpson          2pm  Langer          3.30pm  Tschinkel

Thursday     9.30am     Möller                         11am   Werner             2pm  Klingler        3.45pm   Moonen                5pm  André

Friday         9.30am    Maulik                         11am   Kerz


Titles and abstracts


Yves André
Holoedry of Euclidean lattices and quasi-homogeneous varieties

Abstract: we explain how symmetries of a Euclidean lattice and its tensor powers can be controlled in terms of a reductive group and an affine quasi-homogeneous variety canonically
 attached to the lattice (construction inspired by the theory of motives).


Francis Brown
De Rham fundamental group of a punctured elliptic curve




Samuel Grushevsky
Cohomology classes on moduli of abelian varieties

Abstract: We compute the Chow and cohomology classes of some geometrically defined loci in the moduli space of principally polarized abelian varieties. These computations
could be viewed as a step towards defining an extended tautological ring: the subring of cohomology of a suitable toroidal compactification of the moduli space containing the
Chern classes of the Hodge bundle and some boundary classes.




Philipp Habegger
Unlikely Intersections in Products of Modular Curves and Abelian Schemes


Abstract: A general conjecture of Pink predicts how a fixed subvariety of a  mixed Shimura variety meets special subvarieties of unusually large codimension. A closely related
conjecture was formulated earlier by  Zilber for semi-abelian varieties. I will present results into the direction of this conjecture  in the particular setting of abelian schemes
and a product of modular  curves. Some of this is joint work with Jonathan Pila.




Jochen Heinloth
On motivic classes of moduli spaces of Higgs bundles

Abstract: Motivated by a series of conjectures on the cohomology of the moduli space of Higgs bundles on curves we found a cut-and-paste approach to the computation of the
cohomology of  these spaces.  This is joint work with O. Garcia-Prada and A. Schmitt.




Annette Huber
p-adic periods for reductive groups

Abstract: (joint work with G. Kings, Regensburg) We propose a definition of p-adic periods for reductive groups that replaces the complex comparison isomorphism
between de Rham  cohomology and singular cohomology by  the Lazard isomorphism between Lie group  cohomology and continuous groups cohomology.  This is in
analogy to Borel's approach  at the infinite fiber. We were able to show  that these p-adic periods are the correct  factors turning Borel's formula for  values of Dedekind
 zeta function into  an integral formula. We can  also  show that  these p-adic periods compute the Soulé  regulator, ie., the étale Chern class that  occurs in the Bloch-Kato
 conjecture.




Moritz Kerz
p-adic deformation of cycle classes

Abstract: We study the deformation properties of cycle classes for a p-adic smooth projective scheme over the ring of Witt vectors.  The expected deformation is
described  by the p-adic  variational Hodge conjecture. (Joint work with S. Bloch and H. Esnault.)




Bruno Klingler
Symmetric differentials and fundamental group

Abstract : Classical Hodge theory says that the sheaves of exterior differentials control the usual Betti cohomology of a smooth complex projective variety X. Is there a
similar relation between the sheaves of symmetric differentials and the topology of X ? In this talk I will explain how symmetric differentials control finite dimensional
 representations  of the topological fundamental group of X. Using automorphic forms this leads to new striking rigidity properties for fundamental groups of certain ball quotients.




Adrian Langer
 On a positive equicharacteristic version of the p-curvature  conjecture

Abstract: I would like to talk about the p-curvature conjecture.  The equicharacteristic zero version of this conjecture was obtained by Yves Andre. I will focus on
 possible  generalizations to positive equicharacteristic. This is a report on a joint work  with Hélčne Esnault.





Radu Laza
Semi-algebraic horizontal subvarieties of Calabi-Yau type

Abstract: Except the classical cases of abelian varieties and K3 surfaces, the images of period maps for families of  algebraic varieties satisfy non-trivial Griffiths' transversality
relations.  It is  of interest to understand these images of period maps, especially for Calabi-Yau threefolds. In this talk, we will discuss the case when the images of period maps
can be described  algebraically.  Specifically, we show that if a horizontal subvariety Z of a period domain D is semi-algebraic and is stabilized by a large discrete group, then Z
is a Hermitian symmetric domain with a totally  geodesic embedding into the period domain D. Additionally we classify all the semi-algebraic cases for variations of Hodge
 structures of Calabi-Yau type (complementing some earlier work of Gross and Sheng-Zuo).  This is   joint work with R. Friedman.





Davesh  Maulik
 Finiteness of K3 surfaces and the Tate conjecture

Abstract:  Given a class of varieties, it is natural to ask if it has only finitely many members defined over each finite field. I will discuss this question for K3 surfaces and explain
the following  result: one has such a finiteness statement for K3 surfaces if and only if the Tate conjecture holds for K3 surfaces. This is joint work with Max Lieblich and Andrew
Snowden.




Martin Möller

 Construction of Kobayashi curves


Abstract: Kobayashi curves are algebraic curves that  are totally geodesic for the Kobayashi metric.  On Hilbert modular surfaces these curves are  rigid and thus interesting
from a geometric and arithmetic perspective.  Kobayashi curves include the well-known  Hirzebruch-Zagier cycles but besides that there  are very few techniques to construct them.
We  present a new method  to exhibit Kobayashi  curves using derivatives of theta functions.  This solves also the problem of determining  the Euler characteristic of some
Teichmueller  curves constructed by McMullen.






Ben Moonen
Motivic decomposition of abelian schemes

Abstract: I will first review some classical facts, due to Beauville, Deninger, Murre and Kuennemann, related to the decomposition of the Chow motive of an abelian scheme.
After that  I will show, using some basic representation theory, that there is a natural refinement of these decompositions for abelian schemes that have non-trivial endomorphisms.




Stefan Müller-Stach
Introduction to periods and Nori motives

Abstract: This is a report on recent joint work with Annette Huber on the relation between the period torsor and the Tannaka group of Nori mixed motives, following some ideas
 of Kontsevich  and Nori
.



Johannes Nicaise
Néron component groups of wildly ramified abelian varieties

Abstract: I will present some results on the behaviour of Néron component groups of abelian varieties under ramified base change, with special emphasis on wildly ramified
abelian varieties. The main idea is that Néron models behave well under base change if the extension is "sufficiently orthogonal" to the minimal extension where the abelian variety
acquires semi-abelian reduction. The hardest case is the case of abelian varieties with potential good reduction; I will discuss some open problems and possible approaches in that setting.




Damian Rössler
A positive characteristic analog of Manin's theorem of the kernel

Abstract: Let A be an abelian variety defined over the function field K of a smooth curve defined over a finite field of characteristic p>0. We shall present some results and
conjectures on the  structure of the set $\cap_{k\geq 0}p^k\cdot A(K^{\rm sep})$.  In particular, we shall show that it consists of torsion points, as conjectured by A. Pillay.
This can be viewed as an analog of Manin's theorem of  the kernel.




Carlos Simpson
Higher nonabelian cohomology of algebraic varieties

Abstract: The aim of this talk is to give an introduction to nonabelian cohomology of complex algebraic varieties via higher stacks, with an emphasis on the possibility of doing
Hodge theory and a discussion of where some of the problems currently lie.



Yuri Tschinkel
Rational points on algebraic varieties over function fields

Abstract: I will discuss various approaches to the construction of sections of fibrations over curves and higher-dimensional bases.




Annette Werner
 Buildings and non-archimedean flag varieties

Abstract: In joint work with Bertrand Rémy and Amaury Thuillier it was shown that Bruhat-Tits buildings can be embedded in  Berkovich analytic flag varieties. The image of the
 building is contained in an open subset which in the case of projective space is Drinfeld's well-known p-adic upper half plane.  We will discuss these embeddings and investigate
degenerations of flag  varieties defined with subcomplexes of the building.





Andrei Yafaev
A hyperbolic Ax-Lindemann theorem in the cocompact case

Abstract: This is a joint work with Emmanuel Ullmo.This work is motivated by J.Pila's strategy to prove the André-Oort conjecture. One ingredient in the strategy is the
 following  conjecture: Let S be a Shimura variety uniformised by a symmetric space X. Let V be an algebraic subvariety of S. Maximal algebraic subvarieties of the preimage
of V in X are precisely  the components of the preimages of weakly special subvarieties contained in V. We will explain the proof of this conjecture in the case where S is compact.