arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Michael Larsen.
With suitable order of limits, as p, m, and n all tend to infinity, the distribution of the normalized trace of Frobenius on H^1 of a "random" plane curve of degree n over the field with p^m elements, tends to a Gaussian distribution. The same is true of a "random" curve of genus g over the field with p^m elements.
For every finite field F and every positive integer r, there exists a finite extension F' of F such that either SO(2r+1,F') or its simple derived group can be realized as a Galois group over Q. If the characteristic of F is 3 or 5 (mod 8), then we can guarantee that the derived group of SO(2r+1,F') can be realized. Likewise, for every finite field F, there exists a finite extension F' of F such that the finite simple group G_2(F') can be realized a Galois group over Q. The proof uses automorphic forms to construct Galois representations which cut out Galois extensions of the desired type.
There exists a function f: N -> N such that for every positive integer d, every quasi-finite field K and every projective hypersurface X of degree d and dimension at least f(d), the set X(K) is non-empty. This is a special case of a more general result about intersections of hypersurfaces of fixed degree in projective spaces of sufficiently high dimension over fields with finitely generated Galois groups.
Let $X$ be a complex Calabi-Yau variety, that is, a complex projective variety with canonical singularities whose canonical class is numerically trivial. Let $G$ be a finite group acting on $X$ and consider the quotient variety $X/G$. The aim of this paper is to determine the place of $X/G$ in the birational classification of varieties. That is, we determine the Kodaira dimension of $X/G$ and decide when it is uniruled or rationally connected. If $G$ acts without fixed points, then $κ(X/G)=κ(X)=0$; thus the interesting case is when $G$ has fixed points. We answer the above questions in terms of the action of the stabilizer subgroups near the fixed points. We give a rough classification of possible stabilizer groups which cause $X/G$ to have Kodaira dimension $-\infty$ or equivalently (as we show) to be uniruled. These stabilizers are closely related to unitary reflection groups.
Waring's classical problem deals with expressing every natural number as a sum of g(k) k-th powers. Recently there has been considerable interest in similar questions for nonabelian groups, and simple groups in particular. Here the k-th power word is replaced by an arbitrary nontrivial group word w, and the goal is to express group elements as short products of values of w. We give a best possible and somewhat surprising solution for this Waring type problem for various finite simple groups, showing that a product of length two suffices to express all elements. We also show that the set of values of w is very large, improving various results obtained previously. Along the way we also obtain new results of independent interest on character values and class squares in symmetric groups. Our methods involve algebraic geometry, representation theory, probabilistic arguments, as well as three prime theorems from additive number theory (approximating Goldbach's Conjecture).
We investigate the rate of growth of the function of n which counts the number of complex irreducible representations of a fixed group of degree less than or equal to n. The emphasis is on linear groups, especially compact real and p-adic Lie groups arithmetic groups.
Let K be a field not of characteristic 2 such that every finite separable extension of K is cyclic. Let A be an abelian variety over K. If K is infinite, then A(K) is Zariski-dense in A. If K is not locally finite, the rank of A over K is infinite.
Let E be an elliptic curve defined over a number field K, V the complexification of the group of rational points of E over an algebraic closure L of K, and G the Galois group Gal(L/K). We show that for each root of unity w, the set of elements g in G such that w is an eigenvalue of infinite multiplicity for g acting on V has non-empty interior.
We consider the classification problem for compact Lie groups $G\subset U(n)$ which are generated by a single conjugacy class with a fixed number $N$ of distinct eigenvalues. We give an explicit classification when N=3, and apply this to extract information about Galois representations and braid group representations.
A linear system of real quadratic forms defines a real projective variety. The real non-singular locus of this variety (more precisely of the underlying scheme) has a highly connected double cover as long as each non-zero form in the system has sufficiently high Witt index.
We give local conditions at the infinite places of a number field K ensuring that the intersection of n quadrics in projective N-space over K, N >> n, satisfies weak approximation.
We exhibit a natural Lie algebra structure on the graded space of cyclic coinvariants of a symplectic vector space.
If A is an abelian variety over a number field K, and L is a (possibly infinite) extension of K generated by torsion points of A, then the quotient of A(L) by its torsion subgroup is a free abelian group.
If A/K is an abelian variety over a number field and P and Q are rational points, the original support conjecture asserted that if the order of Q (mod p) divides the order of P (mod p) for almost all primes p of K, then Q is obtained from P by applying an endomorphism of A. This is now known to be untrue. In this note we prove that it is not even true modulo the torsion of A.
We show that for an odd prime r > 3 and an integer g > 1, in the projective representation given by the SO(3) Witten-Chern-Simons theory at an rth root of unity, the image of the mapping class group of a surface of genus g is dense.
We consider limits of p-adic Galois representations, study different notions of convergence for such representations, and prove Cebotarev-type density theorems for them.
An element w in the free group on r letters defines a map f from G^r to G for each group G. In this note, we show that whenever w is non-trivial and G is a semisimple algebraic group, f is dominant. When G is a finite simple group, the ratio \log |f(G^r)| over \log |G| tends to 1 as the order of G tends to infinity.
We consider continuous representations of the Galois group G of a number field K taking values in the completion C of an algebraic closure A of the field of l-adic numbers. We give a construction of irreducible representations of G in GL(2,C) which cannot be conjugated into GL(2,A) but for which there exist density-one sets of primes with Frobenius traces in A. We also show that any such representation must be ramified at infinitely many primes of K.