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.

We adapt a technique of Kisin to construct and study crystalline deformation rings of $G_{K}$ for a finite extension $K/\mathbb{Q}_{p}$. This is done by considering a moduli space of Breuil–Kisin modules, satisfying an additional Galois condition, over the unrestricted deformation ring. For $K$ unramified over $\mathbb{Q}_{p}$ and Hodge–Tate weights in $[0,p]$, we study the geometry of this space. As a consequence, we prove that, under a mild cyclotomic-freeness assumption, all crystalline representations of an unramified extension of $\mathbb{Q}_{p}$, with Hodge–Tate weights in $[0,p]$, are potentially diagonalizable.

We contribute to the foundations of tropical geometry with a view toward formulating tropical moduli problems, and with the moduli space of curves as our main example. We propose a moduli functor for the moduli space of curves and show that it is representable by a geometric stack over the category of rational polyhedral cones. In this framework, the natural forgetful morphisms between moduli spaces of curves with marked points function as universal curves.

Our approach to tropical geometry permits tropical moduli problems—moduli of curves or otherwise—to be extended to logarithmic schemes. We use this to construct a smooth tropicalization morphism from the moduli space of algebraic curves to the moduli space of tropical curves, and we show that this morphism commutes with all of the tautological morphisms.

We show that complex Fano hypersurfaces can have arbitrarily large degrees of irrationality. More precisely, if we fix a Fano index $e$, then the degree of irrationality of a very general complex Fano hypersurface of index $e$ and dimension n is bounded from below by a constant times $\sqrt{n}$. To our knowledge, this gives the first examples of rationally connected varieties with degrees of irrationality greater than 3. The proof follows a degeneration to characteristic $p$ argument, which Kollár used to prove nonrationality of Fano hypersurfaces. Along the way, we show that in a family of varieties, the invariant ‘the minimal degree of a dominant rational map to a ruled variety’ can only drop on special fibers. As a consequence, we show that for certain low-dimensional families of varieties, the degree of irrationality also behaves well under specialization.

Waldspurger’s formula gives an identity between the norm of a torus period and an $L$-function of the twist of an automorphic representation on GL(2). For any two Hecke characters of a fixed quadratic extension, one can consider the two torus periods coming from integrating one character against the automorphic induction of the other. Because the corresponding $L$-functions agree, (the norms of) these periods—which occur on different quaternion algebras—are closely related. In this paper, we give a direct proof of an explicit identity between the torus periods themselves.

In this paper, we introduce a method known as polynomial frame approximation for approximating smooth, multivariate functions defined on irregular domains in $d$ dimensions, where $d$ can be arbitrary. This method is simple, and relies only on orthogonal polynomials on a bounding tensor-product domain. In particular, the domain of the function need not be known in advance. When restricted to a subdomain, an orthonormal basis is no longer a basis, but a frame. Numerical computations with frames present potential difficulties, due to the near-linear dependence of the truncated approximation system. Nevertheless, well-conditioned approximations can be obtained via regularization, for instance, truncated singular value decompositions. We comprehensively analyze such approximations in this paper, providing error estimates for functions with both classical and mixed Sobolev regularity, with the latter being particularly suitable for higher-dimensional problems. We also analyze the sample complexity of the approximation for sample points chosen randomly according to a probability measure, providing estimates in terms of the corresponding Nikolskii inequality for the domain. In particular, we show that the sample complexity for points drawn from the uniform measure is quadratic (up to a log factor) in the dimension of the polynomial space, independently of $d$, for a large class of nontrivial domains. This extends a well-known result for polynomial approximation in hypercubes.

We analyze stability of conservative solutions of the Cauchy problem on the line for the Camassa–Holm (CH) equation. Generically, the solutions of the CH equation develop singularities with steep gradients while preserving continuity of the solution itself. In order to obtain uniqueness, one is required to augment the equation itself by a measure that represents the associated energy, and the breakdown of the solution is associated with a complicated interplay where the measure becomes singular. The main result in this paper is the construction of a Lipschitz metric that compares two solutions of the CH equation with the respective initial data. The Lipschitz metric is based on the use of the Wasserstein metric.

We study the geometry of the Thurston metric on the Teichmüller space of hyperbolic structures on a surface $S$. Some of our results on the coarse geometry of this metric apply to arbitrary surfaces $S$ of finite type; however, we focus particular attention on the case where the surface is a once-punctured torus. In that case, our results provide a detailed picture of the infinitesimal, local, and global behavior of the geodesics of the Thurston metric, as well as an analogue of Royden’s theorem.

We introduce inner amenability for discrete probability-measure-preserving (p.m.p.) groupoids and investigate its basic properties, examples, and the connection with central sequences in the full group of the groupoid or central sequences in the von Neumann algebra associated with the groupoid. Among other things, we show that every free ergodic p.m.p. compact action of an inner amenable group gives rise to an inner amenable orbit equivalence relation. We also obtain an analogous result for compact extensions of equivalence relations that either are stable or have a nontrivial central sequence in their full group.

We study a relative variant of Serre’s notion of $G$-complete reducibility for a reductive algebraic group $G$. We let $K$ be a reductive subgroup of $G$, and consider subgroups of $G$ that normalize the identity component $K^{\circ }$. We show that such a subgroup is relatively $G$-completely reducible with respect to $K$ if and only if its image in the automorphism group of $K^{\circ }$ is completely reducible. This allows us to generalize a number of fundamental results from the absolute to the relative setting. We also derive analogous results for Lie subalgebras of the Lie algebra of $G$, as well as ‘rational’ versions over nonalgebraically closed fields.

We introduce a new family of real-analytic modular forms on the upper-half plane. They are arguably the simplest class of ‘mixed’ versions of modular forms of level one and are constructed out of real and imaginary parts of iterated integrals of holomorphic Eisenstein series. They form an algebra of functions satisfying many properties analogous to classical holomorphic modular forms. In particular, they admit expansions in $q,\overline{q}$ and $\log |q|$ involving only rational numbers and single-valued multiple zeta values. The first nontrivial functions in this class are real-analytic Eisenstein series.

For a finite group $G$, let $d(G)$ denote the minimal number of elements required to generate $G$. In this paper, we prove sharp upper bounds on $d(H)$ whenever $H$ is a maximal subgroup of a finite almost simple group. In particular, we show that $d(H)\leqslant 5$ and that $d(H)\geqslant 4$ if and only if $H$ occurs in a known list. This improves a result of Burness, Liebeck and Shalev. The method involves the theory of crowns in finite groups.

We study solutions of difference equations in the rings of sequences and, more generally, solutions of equations with a monoid action in the ring of sequences indexed by the monoid. This framework includes, for example, difference equations on grids (for example, standard difference schemes) and difference equations in functions on words. On the universality side, we prove a version of strong Nullstellensatz for such difference equations under the assumption that the cardinality of the ground field is greater than the cardinality of the monoid and construct an example showing that this assumption cannot be omitted. On the undecidability side, we show that the following problems are undecidable:

We introduce a notion of complexity of diagrams (and, in particular, of objects and morphisms) in an arbitrary category, as well as a notion of complexity of functors between categories equipped with complexity functions. We discuss several examples of this new definition in categories of wide common interest such as finite sets, Boolean functions, topological spaces, vector spaces, semilinear and semialgebraic sets, graded algebras, affine and projective varieties and schemes, and modules over polynomial rings. We show that on one hand categorical complexity recovers in several settings classical notions of nonuniform computational complexity (such as circuit complexity), while on the other hand it has features that make it mathematically more natural. We also postulate that studying functor complexity is the categorical analog of classical questions in complexity theory about separating different complexity classes.

Many phenomena in geometry and analysis can be explained via the theory of $D$-modules, but this theory explains close to nothing in the non-archimedean case, by the absence of integration by parts. Hence there is a need to look for alternatives. A central example of a notion based on the theory of $D$-modules is the notion of holonomic distributions. We study two recent alternatives of this notion in the context of distributions on non-archimedean local fields, namely $\mathscr{C}^{\text{exp}}$-class distributions from Cluckers et al. [‘Distributions and wave front sets in the uniform nonarchimedean setting’, Trans. Lond. Math. Soc.5(1) (2018), 97–131] and WF-holonomicity from Aizenbud and Drinfeld [‘The wave front set of the Fourier transform of algebraic measures’, Israel J. Math.207(2) (2015), 527–580 (English)]. We answer a question from Aizenbud and Drinfeld [‘The wave front set of the Fourier transform of algebraic measures’, Israel J. Math.207(2) (2015), 527–580 (English)] by showing that each distribution of the $\mathscr{C}^{\text{exp}}$-class is WF-holonomic and thus provides a framework of WF-holonomic distributions, which is stable under taking Fourier transforms. This is interesting because the $\mathscr{C}^{\text{exp}}$-class contains many natural distributions, in particular, the distributions studied by Aizenbud and Drinfeld [‘The wave front set of the Fourier transform of algebraic measures’, Israel J. Math.207(2) (2015), 527–580 (English)]. We show also another stability result of this class, namely, one can regularize distributions without leaving the $\mathscr{C}^{\text{exp}}$-class. We strengthen a link from Cluckers et al. [‘Distributions and wave front sets in the uniform nonarchimedean setting’, Trans. Lond. Math. Soc.5(1) (2018), 97–131] between zero loci and smooth loci for functions and distributions of the $\mathscr{C}^{\text{exp}}$-class. A key ingredient is a new resolution result for subanalytic functions (by alterations), based on embedded resolution for analytic functions and model theory.

In representation theory, commutative algebra and algebraic geometry, it is an important problem to understand when the triangulated category $\mathsf{D}_{\operatorname{sg}}^{\mathbb{Z}}(R)=\text{}\underline{\mathsf{CM}}_{0}^{\mathbb{Z}}R$ admits a tilting (respectively, silting) object for a $\mathbb{Z}$-graded commutative Gorenstein ring $R=\bigoplus _{i\geqslant 0}R_{i}$. Here $\mathsf{D}_{\operatorname{sg}}^{\mathbb{Z}}(R)$ is the singularity category, and $\text{}\underline{\mathsf{CM}}_{0}^{\mathbb{Z}}R$ is the stable category of $\mathbb{Z}$-graded Cohen–Macaulay (CM) $R$-modules, which are locally free at all nonmaximal prime ideals of $R$.

In this paper, we give a complete answer to this problem in the case where $\dim R=1$ and $R_{0}$ is a field. We prove that $\text{}\underline{\mathsf{CM}}_{0}^{\mathbb{Z}}R$ always admits a silting object, and that $\text{}\underline{\mathsf{CM}}_{0}^{\mathbb{Z}}R$ admits a tilting object if and only if either $R$ is regular or the $a$-invariant of $R$ is nonnegative. Our silting/tilting object will be given explicitly. We also show that if $R$ is reduced and nonregular, then its $a$-invariant is nonnegative and the above tilting object gives a full strong exceptional collection in $\text{}\underline{\mathsf{CM}}_{0}^{\mathbb{Z}}R=\text{}\underline{\mathsf{CM}}^{\mathbb{Z}}R$.

A subgraph of an edge-coloured graph is called rainbow if all its edges have different colours. We prove a rainbow version of the blow-up lemma of Komlós, Sárközy, and Szemerédi that applies to almost optimally bounded colourings. A corollary of this is that there exists a rainbow copy of any bounded-degree spanning subgraph H in a quasirandom host graph G, assuming that the edge-colouring of G fulfills a boundedness condition that is asymptotically best possible.

This has many applications beyond rainbow colourings: for example, to graph decompositions, orthogonal double covers, and graph labellings.

We show that the mod p cohomology of a simple Shimura variety treated in Harris-Taylor’s book vanishes outside a certain nontrivial range after localizing at any non-Eisenstein ideal of the Hecke algebra. In cases of low dimensions, we show the vanishing outside the middle degree under a mild additional assumption.

We show that for any n divisible by 3, almost all order-n Steiner triple systems admit a decomposition of almost all their triples into disjoint perfect matchings (that is, almost all Steiner triple systems are almost resolvable).

We show that if X is a smooth complex projective surface with torsion-free cohomology, then the Hilbert scheme $X^{[n]}$ has torsion-free cohomology for every natural number n. This extends earlier work by Markman on the case of Poisson surfaces. The proof uses Gholampour-Thomas’s reduced obstruction theory for nested Hilbert schemes of surfaces.