Each finite dimensional irreducible rational representation V of the symplectic group Sp$_2g$(Q) determines a generically defined local system V over the moduli space M$_g$ of genus g smooth projective curves. We study H$^2$ (M$_g$; V) and the mixed Hodge structure on it. Specifically, we prove that if g [ges ] 6, then the natural map IH$^2$(M˜$_g$; V) → H$^2$(M$_g$; V) is an isomorphism where M˜$_g$ is the Satake compactification of M$_g$. Using the work of Saito we conclude that the mixed Hodge structure on H$^2$(M$_g$; V) is pure of weight 2+r if V underlies a variation of Hodge structure of weight r. We also obtain estimates on the weight of the mixed Hodge structure on H$^2$(M$_g$; V) for 3 [les ] g < 6. Results of this article can be applied in the study of relations in the Torelli group T$_g$.

We study a family of mixed Tate motives over $\mathbb{Z}$ whose periods are linear forms in the zeta values $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}(n)$. They naturally include the Beukers–Rhin–Viola integrals for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}(2)$ and the Ball–Rivoal linear forms in odd zeta values. We give a general integral formula for the coefficients of the linear forms and a geometric interpretation of the vanishing of the coefficients of a given parity. The main underlying result is a geometric construction of a minimal ind-object in the category of mixed Tate motives over $\mathbb{Z}$ which contains all the non-trivial extensions between simple objects. In a joint appendix with Don Zagier, we prove the compatibility between the structure of the motives considered here and the representations of their periods as sums of series.

Let $A$ be an abelian variety over a global field $K$ of characteristic $p\geqslant 0$. If $A$ has nontrivial (respectively full) $K$-rational $l$-torsion for a prime $l\neq p$, we exploit the fppf cohomological interpretation of the $l$-Selmer group $\text{Sel}_{l}\,A$ to bound $\#\text{Sel}_{l}\,A$ from below (respectively above) in terms of the cardinality of the $l$-torsion subgroup of the ideal class group of $K$. Applied over families of finite extensions of $K$, the bounds relate the growth of Selmer groups and class groups. For function fields, this technique proves the unboundedness of $l$-ranks of class groups of quadratic extensions of every $K$ containing a fixed finite field $\mathbb{F}_{p^{n}}$ (depending on $l$). For number fields, it suggests a new approach to the Iwasawa ${\it\mu}=0$ conjecture through inequalities, valid when $A(K)[l]\neq 0$, between Iwasawa invariants governing the growth of Selmer groups and class groups in a $\mathbb{Z}_{l}$-extension.

In this article, we study the homomorphisms between scalar generalized Verma modules. We conjecture that any homomorphism between scalar generalized Verma modules is a composition of elementary homomorphisms. The purpose of this article is to confirm the conjecture for some parabolic subalgebras under the assumption that the infinitesimal characters are regular.

We prove two results about the width of words in $\operatorname{SL}_{n}(\mathbb{Z})$. The first is that, for every $n\geqslant 3$, there is a constant $C(n)$ such that the width of any word in $\operatorname{SL}_{n}(\mathbb{Z})$ is less than $C(n)$. The second result is that, for any word $w$, if $n$ is big enough, the width of $w$ in $\operatorname{SL}_{n}(\mathbb{Z})$ is at most 87.

Upper and lower bounds for the Seshadri constants of canonical bundles of compact hyperbolic spaces are given in terms of metric invariants. The lower bound is obtained by carrying out the symplectic blow-up construction for the Poincaré metric, and the upper bound is obtained by a convexity-type argument.

We lay the groundwork in this first installment of a series of papers aimed at developing a theory of Hrushovski–Kazhdan style motivic integration for certain types of nonarchimedean $o$-minimal fields, namely power-bounded $T$-convex valued fields, and closely related structures. The main result of the present paper is a canonical homomorphism between the Grothendieck semirings of certain categories of definable sets that are associated with the $\text{VF}$-sort and the $\text{RV}$-sort of the language ${\mathcal{L}}_{T\text{RV}}$. Many aspects of this homomorphism can be described explicitly. Since these categories do not carry volume forms, the formal groupification of the said homomorphism is understood as a universal additive invariant or a generalized Euler characteristic. It admits not just one, but two specializations to $\unicode[STIX]{x2124}$. The overall structure of the construction is modeled on that of the original Hrushovski–Kazhdan construction.

We prove for a large family of rings R that their λ-pure global dimension is greater than one for each infinite regular cardinal λ. This answers in the negative a problem posed by Rosický. The derived categories of such rings then do not satisfy, for any λ, the Adams λ-representability for morphisms. Equivalently, they are examples of well-generated triangulated categories whose λ-abelianization in the sense of Neeman is not a full functor for any λ. In particular, we show that given a compactly generated triangulated category, one may not be able to find a Rosický functor among the λ-abelianization functors.

A new method to approach enumerative questions about rational curves on algebraic varieties is described. The idea is to reduce the counting problems to computations on the Néron-Severi group of a ruled surface. Applications include a short proof of Kontsevich‘s formula for plane curves and the solution of the analogous problem for the Hirzebruch surface F$_3$.

We prove an analogue of Belyi’s theorem in characteristic two. Our proof consists of the following three steps. We first introduce a new notion called pseudo-tameness for morphisms between curves over an algebraically closed field of characteristic two. Secondly, we prove the existence of a ‘pseudo-tame’ rational function by showing the vanishing of an obstruction class. Finally, we construct a tamely ramified rational function from the ‘pseudo-tame’ rational function.

If G is a semisimple Lie group of real rank at least two and Γ is an irreducible lattice in G, then every homomorphism from Γ to the outer automorphism group of a finitely generated free group has finite image.

We prove a bound relating the volume of a curve near a cusp in a complex ball quotient $X=\mathbb{B}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ to its multiplicity at the cusp. There are a number of consequences: we show that for an $n$-dimensional toroidal compactification $\overline{X}$ with boundary $D$, $K_{\overline{X}}+(1-\unicode[STIX]{x1D706})D$ is ample for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}\in (0,(n+1)/2\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B})$, and in particular that $K_{\overline{X}}$ is ample for $n\geqslant 6$. By an independent algebraic argument, we prove that every ball quotient of dimension $n\geqslant 4$ is of general type, and conclude that the phenomenon famously exhibited by Hirzebruch in dimension 2 does not occur in higher dimensions. Finally, we investigate the applications to the problem of bounding the number of cusps and to the Green–Griffiths conjecture.

We show that the Craighero–Gattazzo surface, the minimal resolution of an explicit complex quintic surface with four elliptic singularities, is simply connected. This was conjectured by Dolgachev and Werner, who proved that its fundamental group has a trivial profinite completion. The Craighero–Gattazzo surface is the only explicit example of a smooth simply connected complex surface of geometric genus zero with ample canonical class. We hope that our method will find other applications: to prove a topological fact about a complex surface we use an algebraic reduction mod $p$ technique and deformation theory.

We show that the cohomology of the moduli space of flat SU(2) connections on a two-manifold may be computed using a perfect Morse function.

We give a geometric proof of a formula, due to Segal and Wilson, which describes the order of vanishing of the Riemann theta function in the direction which corresponds to the direction of the tangent space of a Riemann surface at a marked point. While this formula appears in the work of Segal and Wilson as a by-product of some nontrivial constructions from the theory of integrable systems (loop groups, infinite-dimensional Grassmannians, tau functions, Schur polynomials, etc.) our proof only uses the classical theory of linear systems on Riemann surfaces.

Let $C$ be a Petri general curve of genus $g$ and $E$ a general stable vector bundle of rank $r$ and slope $g-1$ over $C$ with $h^{0}(C,E)=r+1$. For $g\geqslant (2r+2)(2r+1)$, we show how the bundle $E$ can be recovered from the tangent cone to the generalised theta divisor $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9}_{E}$ at ${\mathcal{O}}_{C}$. We use this to give a constructive proof and a sharpening of Brivio and Verra’s theorem that the theta map $\mathit{SU}_{C}(r){\dashrightarrow}|r\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E9}|$ is generically injective for large values of $g$.

We prove analogues of several well-known results concerning rational maps between quadrics for the class of so-called quasilinear p-hypersurfaces. These hypersurfaces are nowhere smooth over the base field, so many of the geometric methods which have been successfully applied to the study of projective homogeneous varieties over fields cannot be used. We are therefore forced to take an alternative approach, which is partly facilitated by the appearance of several non-traditional features in the study of these objects from an algebraic perspective. Our main results were previously known for the class of quasilinear quadrics. We provide new proofs here, because the original proofs do not immediately generalise for quasilinear hypersurfaces of higher degree.

The title refers to the nilcommutative or NC-schemes introduced by M. Kapranov in ‘Noncommutative Geometry Based on Commutator Expansions’, J. Reine Angew. Math 505 (1998) 73–118. The latter are noncommutative nilpotent thickenings of commutative schemes. We also consider the parallel theory of nil-Poisson or NP-schemes, which are nilpotent thickenings of commutative schemes in the category of Poisson schemes. We study several variants of de Rham cohomology for NC- and NP-schemes. The variants include nilcommutative and nil-Poisson versions of the de Rham complex as well as of the cohomology of the infinitesimal site introduced by Grothendieck in Crystals and the de Rham Cohomology of Schemes, Dix exposés sur la cohomologie des schémas, Masson, Paris (1968), pp. 306–358. It turns out that each of these noncommutative variants admits a kind of Hodge decomposition which allows one to express the cohomology groups of a noncommutative scheme Y as a sum of copies of the usual (de Rham, infinitesimal) cohomology groups of the underlying commutative scheme X (Theorems 6.1, 6.4, 6.7). As a byproduct we obtain new proofs for classical results of Grothendieck (Corollary 6.2) and of Feigin and Tsygan (Corollary 6.8) on the relation between de Rham and infinitesimal cohomology and between the latter and periodic cyclic homology.

We construct a stable homotopy refinement of quantum annular homology, a link homology theory introduced by Beliakova, Putyra and Wehrli. For each $r\geq ~2$ we associate to an annular link $L$ a naive $\mathbb {Z}/r\mathbb {Z}$-equivariant spectrum whose cohomology is isomorphic to the quantum annular homology of $L$ as modules over $\mathbb {Z}[\mathbb {Z}/r\mathbb {Z}]$. The construction relies on an equivariant version of the Burnside category approach of Lawson, Lipshitz and Sarkar. The quotient under the cyclic group action is shown to recover the stable homotopy refinement of annular Khovanov homology. We study spectrum level lifts of structural properties of quantum annular homology.

Let π be a cuspidal automorphic representation of GL3($\Bbb A$$\Bbb Q$), unramified at p and of cohomological type at infinity. We construct p-adic L-functions, which interpolate the critical values of L(π,s) and which satisfy a logarithmic growth condition. We obtain these functions as p-adic Mellin transforms of certain distributions μπ on $\Bbb Z$p* having values in some fixed number field and which are of moderate growth. In the p-ordinary case we obtain the bound |μπ(U)|p[les ]|μHaar(U)|p for open subsets U[les ] $\Bbb Z$p*, where μHaar denotes the invariant distribution on $\Bbb Z$p*.