Motivated by the problem of finding algebraic constructions of finite coverings in commutative algebra, the Steinitz realization problem in number theory and the study of Hurwitz spaces in algebraic geometry, we investigate the vector bundles underlying the structure sheaf of a finite flat branched covering. We prove that, up to a twist, every vector bundle on a smooth projective curve arises from the direct image of the structure sheaf of a smooth, connected branched cover.

We use methods from the cohomology of groups to describe the finite groups which can act freely and homologically trivially on closed 3-manifolds which are rational homology spheres.

By assuming the endoscopic classification of automorphic representations on inner forms of unitary groups, which is currently work in progress by Kaletha, Minguez, Shin, and White, we bound the growth of cohomology in congruence towers of locally symmetric spaces associated to $U(n,1)$. In the case of lattices arising from Hermitian forms, we expect that the growth exponents we obtain are sharp in all degrees.

We study the existence of transformations of the transfinite plane that allow one to reduce Ramsey-theoretic statements concerning uncountable Abelian groups into classical partition relations for uncountable cardinals.

To exemplify: we prove that for every inaccessible cardinal $\kappa $, if $\kappa $ admits a stationary set that does not reflect at inaccessibles, then the classical negative partition relation $\kappa \nrightarrow [\kappa ]^2_\kappa $ implies that for every Abelian group $(G,+)$ of size $\kappa $, there exists a map $f:G\rightarrow G$ such that for every $X\subseteq G$ of size $\kappa $ and every $g\in G$, there exist $x\neq y$ in X such that $f(x+y)=g$.

We generalize Bloch’s map on torsion cycles from algebraically closed fields to arbitrary fields. While Bloch’s map over algebraically closed fields is injective for zero-cycles and for cycles of codimension at most two, we show that the generalization to arbitrary fields is only injective for cycles of codimension at most two but, in general, not for zero-cycles. Our result implies that Jannsen’s cycle class map in integral $\ell $ -adic continuous étale cohomology is, in general, not injective on torsion zero-cycles over finitely generated fields. This answers a question of Scavia and Suzuki.

We describe a family of compactifications of the space of Bridgeland stability conditions of a triangulated category, following earlier work by Bapat, Deopurkar and Licata. We particularly consider the case of the 2-Calabi–Yau category of the $A_2$ quiver. The compactification is the closure of an embedding (depending on q) of the stability space into an infinite-dimensional projective space. In the $A_2$ case, the three-strand braid group $B_3$ acts on this closure. We describe two distinguished braid group orbits in the boundary, points of which can be identified with certain rational functions in q. Points in one of the orbits are exactly the q-deformed rational numbers recently introduced by Morier-Genoud and Ovsienko, while the other orbit gives a new q-deformation of the rational numbers. Specialising q to a positive real number, we obtain a complete description of the boundary of the compactification.

We study the chromatic number of the curve graph of a surface. We show that the chromatic number grows like $k\log k$ for the graph of separating curves on a surface of Euler characteristic $-k$. We also show that the graph of curves that represent a fixed nonzero homology class is uniquely $t$-colorable, where $t$ denotes its clique number. Together, these results lead to the best known bounds on the chromatic number of the curve graph. We also study variations for arc graphs and obtain exact results for surfaces of low complexity. Our investigation leads to connections with Kneser graphs, the Johnson homomorphism, and hyperbolic geometry.

This paper solves the rational noncommutative analogue of Hilbert’s 17th problem: if a noncommutative rational function is positive semidefinite on all tuples of Hermitian matrices in its domain, then it is a sum of Hermitian squares of noncommutative rational functions. This result is a generalisation and culmination of earlier positivity certificates for noncommutative polynomials or rational functions without Hermitian singularities. More generally, a rational Positivstellensatz for free spectrahedra is given: a noncommutative rational function is positive semidefinite or undefined at every matricial solution of a linear matrix inequality $L\succeq 0$ if and only if it belongs to the rational quadratic module generated by L. The essential intermediate step toward this Positivstellensatz for functions with singularities is an extension theorem for invertible evaluations of linear matrix pencils.

We consider the Euler characteristics $\chi (M)$ of closed, orientable, topological $2n$ -manifolds with $(n-1)$ -connected universal cover and a given fundamental group G of type $F_n$ . We define $q_{2n}(G)$ , a generalised version of the Hausmann-Weinberger invariant [19] for 4–manifolds, as the minimal value of $(-1)^n\chi (M)$ . For all $n\geq 2$ , we establish a strengthened and extended version of their estimates, in terms of explicit cohomological invariants of G. As an application, we obtain new restrictions for nonabelian finite groups arising as fundamental groups of rational homology 4–spheres.

The superspace ring $\Omega _n$ is a rank n polynomial ring tensored with a rank n exterior algebra. Using an extension of the Vandermonde determinant to $\Omega _n$, the authors previously defined a family of doubly graded quotients ${\mathbb {W}}_{n,k}$ of $\Omega _n$, which carry an action of the symmetric group ${\mathfrak {S}}_n$ and satisfy a bigraded version of Poincaré Duality. In this paper, we examine the duality modules ${\mathbb {W}}_{n,k}$ in greater detail. We describe a monomial basis of ${\mathbb {W}}_{n,k}$ and give combinatorial formulas for its bigraded Hilbert and Frobenius series. These formulas involve new combinatorial objects called ordered set superpartitions. These are ordered set partitions $(B_1 \mid \cdots \mid B_k)$ of $\{1,\dots ,n\}$ in which the nonminimal elements of any block $B_i$ may be barred or unbarred.

We prove the Lipman–Zariski conjecture for complex surface singularities with $p_{g}-g-b\leqslant 2$. Here $p_{g}$ is the geometric genus, $g$ is the sum of the genera of exceptional curves and $b$ is the first Betti number of the dual graph. This improves on a previous result of the second author. As an application, we show that a compact complex surface with a locally free tangent sheaf is smooth as soon as it admits two generically linearly independent twisted vector fields and its canonical sheaf has at most two global sections.

Let G be a real Lie group, $\Lambda <G$ a lattice and $H\leqslant G$ a connected semisimple subgroup without compact factors and with finite center. We define the notion of H-expanding measures $\mu $ on H and, applying recent work of Eskin–Lindenstrauss, prove that $\mu $-stationary probability measures on $G/\Lambda $ are homogeneous. Transferring a construction by Benoist–Quint and drawing on ideas of Eskin–Mirzakhani–Mohammadi, we construct Lyapunov/Margulis functions to show that H-expanding random walks on $G/\Lambda $ satisfy a recurrence condition and that homogeneous subspaces are repelling. Combined with a countability result, this allows us to prove equidistribution of trajectories in $G/\Lambda $ for H-expanding random walks and to obtain orbit closure descriptions. Finally, elaborating on an idea of Simmons–Weiss, we deduce Birkhoff genericity of a class of measures with respect to some diagonal flows and extend their applications to Diophantine approximation on similarity fractals to a nonconformal and weighted setting.

In this note we generalize a recent theorem of Guth and Katz on incidences between points and lines in 3-space from characteristic 0 to characteristic $p$ , and we explain how some of the special features of algebraic geometry in characteristic $p$ manifest themselves in problems of incidence geometry.

We investigate norms of spectral projectors on thin spherical shells for the Laplacian on tori. This is closely related to the boundedness of resolvents of the Laplacian and the boundedness of $L^{p}$ norms of eigenfunctions of the Laplacian. We formulate a conjecture and partially prove it.

We introduce an analogue of Bridgeland’s stability conditions for polarised varieties. Much as Bridgeland stability is modelled on slope stability of coherent sheaves, our notion of Z-stability is modelled on the notion of K-stability of polarised varieties. We then introduce an analytic counterpart to stability, through the notion of a Z-critical Kähler metric, modelled on the constant scalar curvature Kähler condition. Our main result shows that a polarised variety which is analytically K-semistable and asymptotically Z-stable admits Z-critical Kähler metrics in the large volume regime. We also prove a local converse and explain how these results can be viewed in terms of local wall crossing. A special case of our framework gives a manifold analogue of the deformed Hermitian Yang–Mills equation.

In 2010, Rhoades proved that promotion on rectangular standard Young tableaux, together with the associated fake-degree polynomial, provides an instance of the cyclic sieving phenomenon. We extend this result to m-tuples of skew standard Young tableaux of the same shape, for fixed m, subject to the condition that the mth power of the associated fake-degree polynomial evaluates to nonnegative integers at roots of unity. However, we are unable to specify an explicit group action. Put differently, we determine in which cases the mth tensor power of a skew character of the symmetric group carries a permutation representation of the cyclic group.

To do so, we use a method proposed by Amini and the first author, which amounts to establishing a bound on the number of border-strip tableaux of skew shape. Finally, we apply our results to the invariant theory of tensor powers of the adjoint representation of the general linear group. In particular, we prove the existence of a bijection between permutations and Stembridge’s alternating tableaux, which intertwines rotation and promotion.

Kruskal’s theorem states that a sum of product tensors constitutes a unique tensor rank decomposition if the so-called k-ranks of the product tensors are large. We prove a ‘splitting theorem’ for sets of product tensors, in which the k-rank condition of Kruskal’s theorem is weakened to the standard notion of rank, and the conclusion of uniqueness is relaxed to the statement that the set of product tensors splits (i.e., is disconnected as a matroid). Our splitting theorem implies a generalization of Kruskal’s theorem. While several extensions of Kruskal’s theorem are already present in the literature, all of these use Kruskal’s original permutation lemma and hence still cannot certify uniqueness when the k-ranks are below a certain threshold. Our generalization uses a completely new proof technique, contains many of these extensions and can certify uniqueness below this threshold. We obtain several other useful results on tensor decompositions as consequences of our splitting theorem. We prove sharp lower bounds on tensor rank and Waring rank, which extend Sylvester’s matrix rank inequality to tensors. We also prove novel uniqueness results for nonrank tensor decompositions.

We consider sets ${\it\Gamma}(n,s,k)$ of narrow clauses expressing that no definition of a size $s$ circuit with $n$ inputs is refutable in resolution R in $k$ steps. We show that every CNF with a short refutation in extended R, ER, can be easily reduced to an instance of ${\it\Gamma}(0,s,k)$ (with $s,k$ depending on the size of the ER-refutation) and, in particular, that ${\it\Gamma}(0,s,k)$ when interpreted as a relativized NP search problem is complete among all such problems provably total in bounded arithmetic theory $V_{1}^{1}$ . We use the ideas of implicit proofs from Krajíček [J. Symbolic Logic, 69 (2) (2004), 387–397; J. Symbolic Logic, 70 (2) (2005), 619–630] to define from ${\it\Gamma}(0,s,k)$ a nonrelativized NP search problem $i{\it\Gamma}$ and we show that it is complete among all such problems provably total in bounded arithmetic theory $V_{2}^{1}$ . The reductions are definable in theory $S_{2}^{1}$ . We indicate how similar results can be proved for some other propositional proof systems and bounded arithmetic theories and how the construction can be used to define specific random unsatisfiable formulas, and we formulate two open problems about them.

We initiate the study of a class of polytopes, which we coin polypositroids, defined to be those polytopes that are simultaneously generalized permutohedra (or polymatroids) and alcoved polytopes. Whereas positroids are the matroids arising from the totally nonnegative Grassmannian, polypositroids are “positive” polymatroids. We parametrize polypositroids using Coxeter necklaces and balanced graphs, and describe the cone of polypositroids by extremal rays and facet inequalities. We introduce a notion of $(W,c)$-polypositroid for a finite Weyl group W and a choice of Coxeter element c. We connect the theory of $(W,c)$-polypositroids to cluster algebras of finite type and to generalized associahedra. We discuss membranes, which are certain triangulated 2-dimensional surfaces inside polypositroids. Membranes extend the notion of plabic graphs from positroids to polypositroids.

We study open-closed orbifold Gromov-Witten invariants of 3-dimensional Calabi-Yau smooth toric Deligne-Mumford stacks (with possibly nontrivial generic stabilisers K and semi-projective coarse moduli spaces) relative to Lagrangian branes of Aganagic-Vafa type. An Aganagic-Vafa brane in this paper is a possibly ineffective $C^\infty $ orbifold that admits a presentation $[(S^1\times \mathbb {R} ^2)/G_\tau ]$ , where $G_\tau $ is a finite abelian group containing K and $G_\tau /K \cong \boldsymbol {\mu }_{\mathfrak {m}}$ is cyclic of some order $\mathfrak {m}\in \mathbb {Z} _{>0}$ .

1. 1. We present foundational materials of enumerative geometry of stable holomorphic maps from bordered orbifold Riemann surfaces to a 3-dimensional Calabi-Yau smooth toric DM stack $\mathcal {X}$ with boundaries mapped into an Aganagic-Vafa brane $\mathcal {L}$ . All genus open-closed Gromov-Witten invariants of $\mathcal {X}$ relative to $\mathcal {L}$ are defined by torus localisation and depend on the choice of a framing $f\in \mathbb {Z} $ of $\mathcal {L}$ .

2. 2. We provide another definition of all genus open-closed Gromov-Witten invariants in (1) based on algebraic relative orbifold Gromov-Witten theory, which agrees with the definition in (1) up to a sign depending on the choice of orientation on moduli of maps in (1). This generalises the definition in [57] for smooth toric Calabi-Yau 3-folds and specifies an orientation on moduli of maps in (1) compatible with the canonical orientation on moduli of relative stable maps determined by the complex structure.

3. 3. When $\mathcal {X}$ is a toric Calabi-Yau 3-orbifold (i.e., when the generic stabiliser K is trivial), so that $G_\tau =\boldsymbol {\mu }_{\mathfrak {m}}$ , we define generating functions $F_{g,h}^{\mathcal {X},(\mathcal {L},f)}$ of open-closed Gromov-Witten invariants of arbitrary genus g and number h of boundary circles; it takes values in $H^*_{ {\mathrm {CR}} }(\mathcal {B} \boldsymbol {\mu }_{\mathfrak {m}}; \mathbb {C} )^{\otimes h}$ , where $H^*_{ {\mathrm {CR}} }(\mathcal {B} \boldsymbol {\mu }_{\mathfrak {m}}; \mathbb {C} )\cong \mathbb {C} ^{\mathfrak {m}}$ is the Chen-Ruan orbifold cohomology of the classifying space $\mathcal {B} \boldsymbol {\mu }_{\mathfrak {m}}$ of $\boldsymbol {\mu }_{\mathfrak {m}}$ .

4. 4. We prove an open mirror theorem that relates the generating function $F_{0,1}^{\mathcal {X},(\mathcal {L},f)}$ of orbifold disk invariants to Abel-Jacobi maps of the mirror curve of $\mathcal {X}$ . This generalises a conjecture by Aganagic-Vafa [6] and Aganagic-Klemm-Vafa [5] (proved in full generality by the first and the second authors in [33]) on the disk potential of a smooth semi-projective toric Calabi-Yau 3-fold.