arXiv subjects

Benjamin Howard

Publications and source records attributed to Benjamin Howard.

46 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2012

Deforming endomorphisms of supersingular Barsotti-Tate groups

The formal deformation space of a supersingular Barsotti-Tate group over of dimension two equipped with an action of Z_{p^2} is known to be isomorphic to the formal spectrum of a power series ring in two variables. If one chooses an extra Z_{p^2}-linear endomorphism of the p-divisible group then the locus in the formal deformation space formed by those deformations for which the extra endomorphism lifts is a closed formal subscheme of codimension two. We give a complete description of the irreducible components of this formal subscheme, compute the multiplicities of these components, and compute the intersection numbers of the components with a distinguished closed formal subscheme of codimension one. These calculations, which extend the Gross-Keating theory of quasi-canonical lifts, are used in the companion article "Intersection theory on Shimura surfaces II" to compute global intersection numbers of special cycles on the integral model of a Shimura surface.

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arXiv2012

Singular moduli refined

We prove a refinement of the results of Gross and Zagier on prime factorizations of singular moduli.

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arXiv2012

Variation of Heegner points in Hida families

Given a weight two modular form f with associated p-adic Galois representation V_f, for certain quadratic imaginary fields K one can construct canonical classes in the Galois cohomology of V_f by taking the Kummer images of Heegner points on the modular abelian variety attached to f. We show that these classes can be interpolated as f varies in a Hida family, and construct an Euler system of big Heegner points for Hida's universal ordinary deformation of V_f. We show that the specialization of this big Euler system to any form in the Hida family is nontrivial, extending results of Cornut and Vatsal from modular forms of weight two and trivial character to all ordinary modular forms, and propose a horizontal nonvanishing conjecture for these cohomology classes. The horizontal nonvanishing conjecture implies, via the theory of Euler systems, a conjecture of Greenberg on the generic ranks of Selmer groups in Hida families.

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arXiv2012

Intersection theory on Shimura surfaces II

This is the third of a series of papers relating intersections of special cycles on the integral model of a Shimura surface to Fourier coefficients of Hilbert modular forms. More precisely, we embed the Shimura curve over Q associated to a rational quaternion algebra into the Shimura surface associated to the base change of the quaternion algebra to a real quadratic field. After extending the associated moduli problems over Z we obtain an arithmetic threefold with a embedded arithmetic surface, which we view as a cycle of codimension one. We then construct a family, indexed by totally positive algebraic integers in the real quadratic field, of codimension two cycles (complex multiplication points) on the arithmetic threefold. The intersection multiplicities of the codimension two cycles with the fixed codimension one cycle are shown to agree with the Fourier coefficients of a (very particular) Hilbert modular form of weight 3/2. The results are higher dimensional variants of results of Kudla-Rapoport-Yang, which relate intersection multiplicities of special cycles on the integral model of a Shimura curve to Fourier coefficients of a modular form in two variables.

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arXiv2012

Intersection theory on Shimura surfaces

Kudla has proposed a general program to relate arithmetic intersection multiplicities of special cycles on Shimura varieties to Fourier coefficients of 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. In the present paper we prove results in a higher dimensional setting. On the integral model of a Shimura surface we consider the intersection of a Shimura curve with a codimension two cycle of complex multiplication points, and relate the intersection to certain cycles classes constructed by Kudla-Rapoport-Yang. As a corollary we deduce that our intersection multiplicities appear as Fourier coefficients of a Hilbert modular form of half-integral weight.

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arXiv2011

The geometry of eight points in projective space: Representation theory, Lie theory, dualities

This paper deals with the geometry of the space (GIT quotient) M_8 of 8 points in P^1, and the Gale-quotient N'_8 of the GIT quotient of 8 points in P^3. The space M_8 comes with a natural embedding in P^{13}, or more precisely, the projectivization of the S_8-representation V_{4,4}. There is a single S_8-skew cubic C in P^{13}. The fact that M_8 lies on the skew cubic C is a consequence of Thomae's formula for hyperelliptic curves, but more is true: M_8 is the singular locus of C. These constructions yield the free resolution of M_8, and are used in the determination of the "single" equation cutting out the GIT quotient of n points in P^1 in general. The space N'_8 comes with a natural embedding in P^{13}, or more precisely, PV_{2,2,2,2}. There is a single skew quintic Q containing N'_8, and N'_8 is the singular locus of the skew quintic Q. The skew cubic C and skew quintic Q are projectively dual. (In particular, they are surprisingly singular, in the sense of having a dual of remarkably low degree.) The divisor on the skew cubic blown down by the dual map is the secant variety Sec(M_8), and the contraction Sec(M_8) - - > N'_8 factors through N_8 via the space of 8 points on a quadric surface. We conjecture that the divisor on the skew quintic blown down by the dual map is the quadrisecant variety of N'_8 (the closure of the union of quadrisecant *lines*), and that the quintic Q is the trisecant variety. The resulting picture extends the classical duality in the 6-point case between the Segre cubic threefold and the Igusa quartic threefold. We note that there are a number of geometrically natural varieties that are (related to) the singular loci of remarkably singular cubic hypersurfaces. Some of the content of this paper appeared in arXiv/0809.1233.

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arXiv2008

The Toric Geometry of Triangulated Polygons in Euclidean Space

Speyer and Sturmfels [SpSt] associated Gröbner toric degenerations $\mathrm{Gr}_2(\C^n)^{\tree}$ of $\mathrm{Gr}_2(\C^n)$ to each trivalent tree $\tree$ with $n$ leaves. These degenerations induce toric degenerations $M_{\br}^{\tree}$ of $M_{\br}$, the space of $n$ ordered, weighted (by $\br$) points on the projective line. Our goal in this paper is to give a geometric (Euclidean polygon) description of the toric fibers as stratified symplectic spaces and describe the action of the compact part of the torus as "bendings of polygons." We prove the conjecture of Foth and Hu [FH] that the toric fibers are homeomorphic to the spaces defined by Kamiyama and Yoshida [KY].

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arXiv2006

The moduli space of n points on the line is cut out by simple quadrics when n is not six

A central question in invariant theory is that of determining the relations among invariants. Geometric invariant theory quotients come with a natural ample line bundle, and hence often a natural projective embedding. This question translates to determining the equations of the moduli space under this embedding. This note deals with one of the most classical quotients, the space of ordered points on the projective line. We show that under any linearization, this quotient is cut out (scheme-theoretically) by a particularly simple set of quadric relations, with the single exception of the Segre cubic threefold (the space of six points with equal weight). Unlike many facts in geometric invariant theory, these results (at least for the stable locus) are field-independent, and indeed work over the integers.

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arXiv2006

Anticyclotomic Iwasawa theory of CM elliptic curves

We study the Iwasawa theory of a CM elliptic curve $E$ in the anticyclotomic $\mathbf{Z}_p$-extension of the CM field, where $p$ is a prime of good, ordinary reduction for $E$. When the complex $L$-function of $E$ vanishes to even order, the two variable main conjecture of Rubin implies that the Pontryagin dual of the $p$-power Selmer group over the anticyclotomic extension is a torsion Iwasawa module. When the order of vanishing is odd, work of Greenberg shows that it is not a torsion module. In this paper we show that in the case of odd order of vanishing the dual of the Selmer group has rank exactly one, and we prove a form of the Iwasawa main conjecture for the torsion submodule.

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arXiv2005

Anticyclotomic Iwasawa theory of CM elliptic curves II

We study the Iwasawa theory of a CM elliptic curve $E$ in the anticyclotomic $\mathbf{Z}_p$-extension $D_\infty$ of the CM field $K$, where $p$ is a prime of good, supersingular reduction for $E$. Our main result yields an asymptotic formula for the corank of the $p$-primary Selmer group of $E$ along the extension $D_\infty/K$.

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