arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Tony Feng.
We prove the Modularity Conjecture for higher theta series on moduli stacks of Hermitian shtukas. For general linear shtukas, we establish a more refined phenomenon that we call supermodularity. As a key input, we prove the Trace Conjecture for Hitchin stacks of low corank, realizing virtual fundamental classes of special cycles as categorical traces.
We report the performance of Aletheia (Feng et al., 2026b), a mathematics research agent powered by Gemini 3 Deep Think, on the inaugural FirstProof challenge. Within the allowed timeframe of the challenge, Aletheia autonomously solved 6 problems (2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10) out of 10 according to majority expert assessments; we note that experts were not unanimous on Problem 8 (only). For full transparency, we explain our interpretation of FirstProof and disclose details about our experiments as well as our evaluation. Raw prompts and outputs are available at https://github.com/google-deepmind/superhuman/tree/main/aletheia.
This expository article elaborates upon my talk at the 2025 AMS Summer Institute on Algebraic Geometry. It gives an introduction to a conjecture from Tate's 1966 S\'eminaire Bourbaki report, predicting the existence of a symplectic form on Brauer groups of surfaces over finite fields, and then an informal tour of the proof in \cite{Feng20} and \cite{CF}.
Recent advances in foundational models have yielded reasoning systems capable of achieving a gold-medal standard at the International Mathematical Olympiad. The transition from competition-level problem-solving to professional research, however, requires navigating vast literature and constructing long-horizon proofs. In this work, we introduce Aletheia, a math research agent that iteratively generates, verifies, and revises solutions end-to-end in natural language. Specifically, Aletheia is powered by an advanced version of Gemini Deep Think for challenging reasoning problems, a novel inference-time scaling law that extends beyond Olympiad-level problems, and intensive tool use to navigate the complexities of mathematical research. We demonstrate the capability of Aletheia from Olympiad problems to PhD-level exercises and most notably, through several distinct milestones in AI-assisted mathematics research: (a) a research paper (Feng26) generated by AI without any human intervention in calculating certain structure constants in arithmetic geometry called eigenweights; (b) a research paper (LeeSeo26) demonstrating human-AI collaboration in proving bounds on systems of interacting particles called independent sets; and (c) an extensive semi-autonomous evaluation (Feng et al., 2026a) of 700 open problems on Bloom's Erdos Conjectures database, including autonomous solutions to four open questions. In order to help the public better understand the developments pertaining to AI and mathematics, we suggest quantifying standard levels of autonomy and novelty of AI-assisted results, as well as propose a novel concept of human-AI interaction cards for transparency. We conclude with reflections on human-AI collaboration in mathematics and share all prompts as well as model outputs at https://github.com/google-deepmind/superhuman/tree/main/aletheia.
Prior work of Feng--Yun--Zhang established a (Higher) Arithmetic Hirzebruch Proportionality Principle, expressing the arithmetic volumes of moduli stacks of shtukas in terms of differential operators applied to $L$-functions. This formula involves certain "eigenweights" which were calculated in simple cases by Feng--Yun--Zhang, but not in general. We document work of a (custom) AI Agent built upon Gemini Deep Think, which employs tools from algebraic combinatorics to connect these eigenweights to the representation theory of symmetric groups, and then determines them for all classical groups.
We present a case study in semi-autonomous mathematics discovery, using Gemini to systematically evaluate 700 conjectures labeled 'Open' in Bloom's Erd\H{o}s Problems database. We employ a hybrid methodology: AI-driven natural language verification to narrow the search space, followed by human expert evaluation to gauge correctness and novelty. We address 13 problems that were marked 'Open' in the database: 5 through seemingly novel autonomous solutions, and 8 through identification of previous solutions in the existing literature. Our findings suggest that the 'Open' status of the problems was through obscurity rather than difficulty. We also identify and discuss issues arising in applying AI to math conjectures at scale, highlighting the difficulty of literature identification and the risk of ''subconscious plagiarism'' by AI. We reflect on the takeaways from AI-assisted efforts on the Erd\H{o}s Problems.
We define and study "tautological classes" in the cohomology of moduli stacks of shtukas, pursuing two directions of applications. First, we prove a formula relating the "arithmetic volume" of tautological classes to higher derivatives of Artin $L$-functions, which can be viewed as an arithmetic analog of Hirzebruch's Proportionality principle. Second, we define and analyze the structure of the "phantom tautological ring", using a general relation between Hecke correspondences and Vinberg's degeneration, and give applications to a function field analog of Colmez's Conjecture.
We construct and analyze the "syntomic Steenrod algebra", which acts on the mod $p$ syntomic cohomology (also known as etale-motivic cohomology) of algebraic varieties in characteristic $p$. We then apply the resulting theory to resolve the last open cases of a 1966 Conjecture of Tate, concerning the existence of a symplectic form on the Brauer groups of smooth proper surfaces over finite fields. More generally, we exhibit symplectic structure on the higher Brauer groups of even dimensional varieties over finite fields. Although the applications are classical, our methods rely on recent advances in perfectoid geometry and prismatic cohomology, which we employ to define a theory of "spectral syntomic cohomology" with coefficients in motivic spectra. We then organize the resulting cohomology theories into a category of "spectral prismatic $F$-gauges", generalizing the prismatic $F$-gauges of Drinfeld and Bhatt--Lurie, for which we establish a ``spectral Serre duality'' extending classical coherent duality. These abstract constructions are leveraged to explicitly compute the syntomic Steenrod operations.
We prove the higher Siegel--Weil formula for \emph{corank one} terms, relating (1) the $r^{\rm th}$ central derivatives of corank one Fourier coefficients of Siegel--Eisenstein series, and (2) the degrees of special cycles of virtual dimension 0 on the moduli stack of Hermitian shtukas with $r$ legs. Notably, the formula holds for all $r$, regardless of the order of vanishing of the Eisenstein series. This extends earlier work of Feng--Yun--Zhang, who proved the higher Siegel--Weil formula for the non-singular (corank zero) terms.
We survey several recent examples of derived structures emerging in connection with the Langlands correspondence. Cases studies include derived Galois deformation rings, derived Hecke algebras, derived Hitchin stacks, and derived special cycles. We also highlight some open problems that we expect to be important for future progress.
Higher theta series on moduli spaces of Hermitian shtukas were constructed by Feng--Yun--Zhang and conjectured to be modular, parallel to classical conjectures in the Kudla program. In this paper we prove the modularity of higher theta series after restriction to the generic locus. The proof is an upgrade, using motivic homotopy theory, of earlier work of Feng--Yun--Zhang which established generic modularity of $\ell$-adic realizations. In the process, we develop some general tools of broader utility. One such is the "motivic sheaf-cycle correspondence", a categorical trace formalism for extracting computations in the Chow group from computations in Voevodsky's derived category of motives. Another new tool is the "derived homogeneous Fourier transform", which we use to implement a form of Fourier analysis for motives.
We study conjectures of Ben-Zvi--Sakellaridis--Venkatesh that categorify the relationship between automorphic periods and $L$-functions in the context of the Geometric Langlands equivalence. We provide evidence for these conjectures in some low-rank examples, by using derived Fourier analysis and the theory of chiral algebras to categorify the Rankin-Selberg unfolding method.
We develop a theory of Smith-Treumann localization and relative parity sheaves in the context of Fargues-Scholze's Geometrization of the Local Langlands Correspondence. We then apply this theory to prove some conjectures of Treumann-Venkatesh concerning mod-$\ell$ Local Langlands functoriality between a reductive group $G$ and its fixed subgroup under an order $\ell$ automorphism. As another application, we calculate the Fargues-Scholze parameters of mod-$\ell$ Howe-unramified toral representations.
The Breuil-M\'{e}zard Conjecture predicts the existence of hypothetical "Breuil-Mezard cycles" in the moduli space of mod $p$ Galois representations of $\mathrm{Gal}(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}_q/\mathbb{Q}_q)$ that should govern congruences between mod $p$ automorphic forms. For generic parameters, we propose a construction of Breuil-M\'{e}zard cycles in arbitrary rank, and verify that they satisfy the Breuil-M\'{e}zard Conjecture for all sufficiently generic tame types and small Hodge-Tate weights. Our method is purely local and group-theoretic, and completely distinct from previous approaches to the Breuil-M\'ezard Conjecture. In particular, we leverage new connections between the Breuil-M\'ezard Conjecture and phenomena occurring in homological mirror symmetry and geometric representation theory.
In a previous paper we constructed higher theta series for unitary groups over function fields, and conjectured their modularity properties. Here we prove the generic modularity of the $\ell$-adic realization of higher theta series in cohomology. The proof debuts a new type of Fourier transform, occurring on the Borel-Moore homology of moduli spaces for shtuka-type objects, that we call the arithmetic Fourier transform. Another novelty in the argument is a sheaf-cycle correspondence extending the classical sheaf-function correspondence, which facilitates the deployment of sheaf-theoretic methods to analyze algebraic cycles. Although the modularity property is a statement within classical algebraic geometry, the proof relies on derived algebraic geometry, especially a nascent theory of derived Fourier analysis on derived vector bundles, which we develop.
We sketch the construction of a derived enhancement of the reciprocity isomorphism of class field theory. Details will appear in a forthcoming joint paper of the authors with A. Raksit.
Brou\'{e}'s Abelian Defect Conjecture predicts interesting derived equivalences between derived categories of modular representations of finite groups. We investigate a generalization of Brou\'{e}'s Conjecture to ring spectrum coefficients and prove this generalization in the cyclic defect case, following an argument of Rouquier.
Let $G$ be a split semi-simple group over a global function field $K$. Given a cuspidal automorphic representation $\Pi$ of $G$ satisfying a technical hypothesis, we prove that for almost all primes $\ell$, there is a cyclic base change lifting of $\Pi$ along any $\mathbb{Z}/\ell\mathbb{Z}$-extension of $K$. Our proof does not rely on any trace formulas; instead it is based on modularity lifting theorems, together with a Smith theory argument to obtain base change for residual representations. As an application, we also prove that for any split semisimple group $G$ over a local function field $F$, and almost all primes $\ell$, any irreducible admissible representation of $G(F)$ admits a base change along any $\mathbb{Z}/\ell\mathbb{Z}$-extension of $F$. Finally, we characterize local base change more explicitly for a class of representations called toral supercuspidal representations.