Search Results

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the three topics discussed in this book: Shimura varieties, hyperelliptic continued fractions and generalized Jacobians, and Faltings heights and L-functions. These topics were covered during the Alpbach Summerschool 2016, the celebration of the tenth session with outstanding speakers covering very different research areas in arithmetic and Diophantine geometry. The first course was given by Peter Scholze on local Shimura varieties and features recent results concerning the local Langlands conjecture. It considers the unpublished theorem which states that for each local Shimura datum, there exists a so-called local Shimura variety, which is a (pro-)rigid analytic space. The second course was given by Umberto Zannier and deals with a rather classical theme but from a modern point of view. His course is on hyperelliptic continued fractions and generalized Jacobians, using the classical Pell equation as the starting point. The third course was given by Shou-Wu Zhang and originates in the famous Chowla–Selberg formula, which was taken up by Gross and Zagier in 1984 to relate values of the L-function for elliptic curves with the height of Heegner points on the curves. Building on this work, X. Yuan, Shou-Wu Zhang, and Wei Zhang succeeded in proving the Gross–Zagier formula on Shimura curves and shortly later they verified the Colmez conjecture on average. In the course, Zhang presents new interesting aspects of the formula.

This chapter details Umberto Zannier's minicourse on hyperelliptic continued fractions and generalized Jacobians. It begins by presenting the Pell equation, which was studied by Indian, and later by Arabic and Greek, mathematicians. The chapter then addresses two questions about continued fractions of algebraic functions. The first concerns the behavior of the solvability of the polynomial Pell equation for families of polynomials. It must be noted that these questions are related to problems of unlikely intersections in families of Jacobians of hyperelliptic curves (or generalized Jacobians). The chapter also reviews several classical definitions and results related to the continued fraction expansion of real numbers and illustrates them by examples.

Much of the power of thermodynamics is shown by its ability to relate apparently independent properties of thermodynamic systems through mathematical identities between partial derivatives. The simplest identities are Maxwell relations, which can be found easily from the differential forms of fundamental relations. This chapter demonstrates efficient methods for discovering and deriving thermodynamic identities using Jacobians.

This chapter provides the necessary background concerning modular curves and modular forms. It covers modular curves, modular forms, lattices and modular forms, Galois representations attached to eigenforms, and Galois representations over finite fields and reduction to torsion in Jacobians.

This chapter presents an analysis of decay rates of integral means of functions. It also provides an introduction of Morrey and Campanato spaces and their relation to Holder spaces. It also provides an introduction of John-Nirenberg space BMO and real Hardy spaces H^p The Hardy space H¹ the div-curl lemma, some Hardy space techniques in PDEs and higher integrability of Jacobians.

Many of the calculations in thermodynamics concern the effects of small changes. To carry out such calculations, we often need to evaluate first and second partial derivatives of some thermodynamic quantities with respect to other thermodynamic quantities. Although there are many such partial second derivatives, they are related by thermodynamic identities. This chapter explains the most straightforward way of deriving the needed thermodynamic identities. After explaining the derivation of Maxwell relations and how to find the right one for any given problem, Jacobian methods are introduced, with an accolade to their simplicity and utility. Several examples of the derivation of thermodynamic identities are given, along with a systematic guide for solving general problems.