Number Theory Seminar

Fall 2008

Abstracts



September 11

Speaker: Irena Wang

Title: Drinfel'd Modules and a Function Field Analog to Atkin's Orthogonal Polynomials

Abstract: Elliptic curves and rank-two Drinfel'd modules are a well-known example of the numerous parallels between number theory

over number fields and over function fields. In particular, similarly to elliptic curves, the endomorphism ring of a Drinfel'd module is either isomorphic to a ring

F_q[T], an order in an imaginary extension of F_q(T), or an order in a quaternion extension of F_q(T), in which case it is called "supersingular."

It's well-known that, over F_q[T], there exists a finite number n_q of isomorphism classes of supersingular Drinfel'd modules (each identified with

a unique supersingular j-invariant), which motivates the construction of a polynomial product called the supersingular locus \prod{x-j), over all such

isomorphism classes. In this talk, I'll present a result giving an explicit construction of polynomials congruent to the supersingular loci for

arbitrary n_q, which was proved by Doris Dobi, Nick Wage, and I in 2007. This result is an adaptation of a similar method presented in a famous paper

of Kaneko and Zagier, which used continued fraction convergents to generate "Atkin Orthogonal Polynomials" congruent the the supersingular loci for

elliptic curves.


September 18

Speaker: Tonghai Yang (University of Wisconsin)

Title: Faltings heights of CM cycles and derivatives of L-functions.

Abstract: In this talk, I will explain a systematic way of constructing Green function for Kudla's special cycles on a Shimura variety. Then we give an

explicit formula for their CM value, which inspires two conjectures about Faltings height of CM cycles, central derivative of L-series, and arithmetic

intersections. Finally, if time permits, we will give evidence of these conjectures and use our explicit formula to give a new proof of the Gross-Zagier

formula.


September 25

Speaker: Xinyi Yuan (IAS)

Title: Derivatives of triple product L-functions.

Abstract: I will talk about the conjecture of Gross-Shoen which relates the central derivative of the Rankin-Selberg L-function of three

modular forms to the Beilinson-Bloch height pairing of the diagonal cycle on the cubic power of the corresponding modular curve.


October 16

Speaker: Ben Howard (Boston College)

Title: Intersection theory on Shimura surfaces.

Abstract: Kudla has proposed a general program to relate arithmetic intersection multiplicities of special cycles on Shimura varieties to

Fourier coefficients of an Eisenstein series. The lowest dimensional case, in which one intersects two codimension one cycles on the integral model of

a Shimura curve, has been completed by Kudla-Rapoport-Yang. We will prove results in a higher dimensional setting: on the integral model of a Shimura

surface we consider the intersection of an embedded Shimura curve with a family of codimension two cycles of complex multiplication points, and

relate the intersection numbers to Fourier coefficients of a Hilbert modular form of half-integral weight.


October 30

Speaker: Bisi Agboola (UCSB)

Title: p-adic conjectures of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer type for elliptic

curves with complex multiplication

Abstract: In this talk, I shall discuss the study of special values of the

Katz two-variable p-adic L-function that lie outside the range of

interpolation, and I shall explain how these are related to certain

conjectures of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer type.


November 20

Speaker: Jeehoon Park (McGill University)

Title: Iwasawa main conjecture for CM elliptic curves at supersingular primes

Abstract: We generalize the Pollack-Rubin proof of the Iwasawa main

conjecture for CM elliptic curves over Q at supersingular primes to

CM elliptic curves over an abelian extension of the imaginary

quadratic field given by CM. We will explain the precise set-up, how

to construct plus/minus algebraic p-adic L-functions and plus/minus

analytic p-adic L-functions and how they coincide. This is a joint

work with Byoung Du Kim and Bei Zhang.