EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT


Colloquium

Title: Rationality of Zeta Functions via Cutting and Pasting
Speaker: Michael Larsen
Speaker Info:
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:

Dwork's theorem asserts that the zeta function of any variety over the field with q elements can be expressed as a rational function in q^{-s}. In the case of curves, Kapranov observed that this is true in a "motivic" sense, which makes sense and continues to hold even for varieties in characteristic zero. He asked whether this remains true for higher dimensional varieties. Valery Lunts and I proved that in general it does not by constructing two very different obstructions, one from birational geometry, and one from Galois representations. This explains, in some sense, why Dwork's theorem was so much harder to prove in higher dimension than in dimension 1.
Date: Wednesday, May 9, 2018
Time: 4:10pm
Where: Lunt 105
Contact Person: Nir Avni
Contact email: avni.nir@gmail.com
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