Workshop Proposal: Cohen-Lenstra Heuristics

University Of Illinois At Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

A workshop on "Cohen-Lenstra Heuristics" will take place April 3-5, 2013 at the University of Illinois at Chicago. This is part of the annual Oliver Atkin Memorial Lecture and Workshop at UIC. The theme of the workshop is the Cohen-Lenstra heuristics for class groups of quadratic fields, and their recent connections to other areas of mathematics, most notably topology. The organizers of this workshop are Ramin Takloo-Bighash (University of Illinois at Chicago) and Akshay Venkatesh (Stanford). The invited speakers are Thomas Church (Stanford), Jordan Ellenberg (University of Wisconsin), Wei Ho (Columbia), Andy Putman (Rice), Arul Shankar (IAS), Frank Thorne (South Carolina), Jacob Tsimerman (Harvard), Akshay Venkatesh (Stanford), Craig Westerland (Melbourne), and Melanie Matchett Wood (University of Wisconsin). Class groups and class numbers are of fundamental importance in number theory and have been the subject of intense research since 19th century starting with the foundational works of Gauss. Cohen-Lenstra Heuristics are a series of surprising conjectures that predict the finer behaviors of these objects in the quadratic field setting. Bringing together experts working in the area will create an environment in which to exchange ideas and to start new projects, leading to a better understanding of these fundamental objects. Additional information can be found on the website's workshop: http://www.math.uic.edu/~rtakloo/atkin2013.html