L-functions and Number Theory Focus Period

PIMS' L-functions and Number Theory CRG is currently ramping up its activities in preparation for the Focus Period in Number Theory. 

The first focus period takes place from May 29-July 5, 2011. The premiere event is from May 29-June 3, 2011, when the University of Calgary will play host to a major conference titled Analytic Theory of L-functions and Applications to Number Theory. This conference will feature lecture series by Brian Conrey (AIM), Ram Murty (Queens), and Kannan Soundararajan (Stanford) in addition to invited lectures by Chantal David (Concordia), Steve Gonek (AIM), Andrew Granville (Montreal), Habiba Kadiri (Lethbridge), Hugh Montgomery (Michigan), Kumar Murty (Toronto), Nathan Ng (Lethbridge), Surya Ramana (Harish Chandra), Michael Rubenstein (Waterloo), and Matthew Young (Texas A&M).

Following this is the CMS Summer Meeting held at the University of Alberta during June 3-5, where PIMS will be running a session titled L-Functions and Number Theory. This session features talks by top senior graduate students and postdocs publicizing their results.  Holding this session at a CMS meeting will also allow these up-and-comers to network with the Canadian mathematical establishment. The speakers for this session are: Alina Bucur (UCSD), Vorrapan Chandee (Stanford), Alina Cojocaru (UIC), Michael Coons (Waterloo), Michael Dewar (Queens), Brandon Fodden (Lethbridge), Leo Goldmakher (Toronto), Hester Graves (Queens), Nathan Jones (Mississippi), Dimitris Koukoupoulous (CRM), Xiannan Li (Stanford), Matilde Lalin (Montreal), Charles Samuels (UBC), Ethan Smith (CRM), Matthew Smith (UBC), and Frank Thorne (Stanford).  Naturally, these mathematicians will also be attending the Calgary workshop. 

Next comes Alberta Number Theory Days IV, tentatively scheduled for June 17-19.  This is a small gathering of the Alberta core of the CRG, together with a few out-of-province guests.  There will be lectures by faculty and postdocs, reports on ongoing research by graduate students, and plenty of time for discussion. 

The next stop on the number theory circuit is the BIRS Workshop on L-packets from June 26-July 1, 2011.  There are already 31 confirmed participants for this workshop including many leading international experts.  In the time between the CMS meeting and the L-packets workshop, PIMS anticipates entertaining various visiting researchers at the participating CRG sites.  In particular, the University of Calgary is planning on hosting a research group activity titled Character Sheaves for Admissible Representations.  Although not officially a CRG activity, BIRS will also be hosting the 5-day workshop Number Theory and Physics at the Crossroads from May 8-May 13, 2011, adding yet another number theory activity to the Alberta schedule for 2011.

The second focus period will take place from October 30-November 11, 2011.  The first event during this period is the 5-day BIRS workshop Cycles on Modular Varieties, which already boasts 30 confirmed participants.  The next week, BIRS will play host to WIN2: Women in Numbers 2, the follow-up event to the wildly successful Women in Numbers workshop that took place in 2008 and resulted in the publication of a volume of research articles.  Although not officially a CRG activity, WIN2 will be immediately followed by Diophantine Methods, Lattices, and the Arithmetic Theory of Quadratic Forms.

We expect to host several visiting researchers over the next months:

Pierre Charollois (Jussieu), March 2011, (seminar on March 10)

Cameron Franc (McGill), April 2011, (seminar on April 4)

Paul Mezo (Ottawa), June 2011

Hadi Salmasian (Ottawa) June 2011

Pramod Achar (LSU) June 2011

Samit Dasgupta (UCSC) TBA