Tag Archives: Matthew Emerton

What the slopes are

Posted on February 25, 2023 by Persiflage

Let \(f\) be a classical modular eigenform of weight \(k\), for example, \(f = \Delta\). The Ramanujan conjecture states that the Hecke eigenvalues \(a_p\) satisfy the bound \(|a_p| \le 2 p^{(k-1)/2}.\) A slightly fancier but cleaner way of saying this … Continue reading →

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30 years of modularity: number theory since the proof of Fermat

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Persiflage

It’s probably fair to say that the target audience for this blog is close to orthogonal to the target audience for my talk, but just in case anyone wants to watch it in HD (and with the audio synced to … Continue reading →

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What would Deuring do?

Posted on April 13, 2022 by Persiflage

This is an incredibly lazy post, but why not! Matt is running a seminar this quarter on the Weil conjectures. It came up that one possible way to prove the Weil conjectures for elliptic curves over finite fields is to … Continue reading →

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The eigencurve is (still) proper

Posted on October 23, 2020 by Persiflage

Although I don’t think about it so much anymore, the eigencurve of Coleman-Mazur was certainly one of my first loves. I can’t quite say I learnt about \(p\)-adic modular forms at my mother’s knee, but I did spend a formative … Continue reading →

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More on Lehmer’s Conjecture

Posted on March 21, 2020 by Persiflage

Lehmer said it was a “natural question” whether there existed an integer such that \(\tau(n)=0\) or not. I’ve wondered a little bit recently about how reasonable this is. (See this post.) The historical context is presumably related to the fact … Continue reading →

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Counting solutions to a_p = λ, Part II

Posted on March 3, 2020 by Persiflage

This is a sequel to this post where the problem of counting eigenforms with \(a_p = \lambda\) and \(\lambda \ne 0\) was considered. Here we report on recent progress in the case \(\lambda = 0\). It is a somewhat notorious … Continue reading →

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The last seven words of Kedlaya-Medvedovsky

Posted on January 14, 2020 by Persiflage

New paper by my student Noah Taylor! It addresses some conjectures raised by Kedlaya and Medvedovsky in this paper. Let \(\mathbf{T}\) denote the Hecke algebra acting on modular forms of weight two and prime level \(N\) generated by Hecke operators … Continue reading →

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A homework exercise for Oaxaca

Posted on October 12, 2019 by Persiflage

Here’s a homework problem for those coming to Oaxaca who have a facility for working with Breuil-Kisin modules and finite flat group schemes. Let \(\mathbf{F}\) be a finite field of characteristic \(p\), and consider a Galois representation: \(\rho: G_{\mathbf{Q}_p} \rightarrow … Continue reading →

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Read my NSF proposal

Posted on October 9, 2019 by Persiflage

Since this is NSF season, I took the opportunity to go back and look at some of my old proposals. I am definitely too shy to put my *most recent* proposal online, but I thought it might be interesting to … Continue reading →

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Tips for new postdocs

Posted on January 20, 2019 by Persiflage

In my role as junior hiring chair, I’ve been thinking a little bit about how a (R1) institution can best serve its postdocs. Many find the transition from graduate student life to being a postdoc somewhat of a rude shock. … Continue reading →

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