Representation theory RTG Seminar Winter 2025

Learning seminar on Modularity of generating functions of special cycles

This Winter our seminar will run Mondays at 3:00pm in EH 3088, organized by Kartik Prasanna. Each talk should be 50 minutes long.

We will follow Chao Li's notes from the 2022 Summer School on the Langlands program at IHES.

Upcoming talks

See the seminar outline for more details and suggestions for each talk.

Week 7 (March 31): Geometric modularity, geometric theta lifting and Kudla-Millson theory

Kartik Prasanna

Week 8 (April 7): Geometric Siegel-Weil and geometric inner product formula

Miao (Pam) Gu

Week 9 (April 14): Arithmetic modularity and special cycles on integral models

Alex Bauman

Week 10 (April 21): Modularity in arithmetic Chow groups

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Week 11 (April 28): Arithmetic Siegel-Weil

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Week 12 (April 28): Arithmetic inner product formula

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Previous talks

Week 1 (February 3): Introduction

Kartik Prasanna

Abstract:

This semester the RTG seminar will focus on the Kudla program. I will give an introduction to this program, which seeks to understand the relation between arithmetic intersection theory on Shimura varieties and L-functions. While there are close connections to the body of conjectures relating algebraic cycles to L-functions (such as the Bloch-Beilinson conjectures), the Kudla program has some additional mysterious features. For instance, in certain cases, it involves not the leading Taylor coefficient of an L-function but rather the subleading term. Other topics that it is related to include the theory of the theta correspondence, Kudla-Millson theory and Borcherds lifts. This talk will explain some of the history of the subject and how some of these ideas tie together.

Notes

Week 2 (February 10): Classical Theta correspondence

Yu-Sheng Lee

Abstract:

We review the definition of Weil representations for a dual reductive pair and the theta correspondence between their representations. To motivate the Kudla-Milson program introduced in the previous talk, we discuss the Shimura correspondence between modular forms of integral and half-integral weights, as well as the period relations between them. In particular, I will explain how these period relations depend on the auxiliary choices that define the Weil representation.

Week 3 (February 17): Siegel-Weil formula and Rallis inner product formula

Jialiang Zou

Abstract:

In the first part , I will introduce the classical Siegel-Weil formula, which expresses an Eisenstein series as a weighted average of theta series associated with lattices in a genus. I will then explore how to interpret it within the framework of the theta lifts. In the second part, I will discuss the Rallis inner product formula, which relates the Petersson inner product of theta lifts to the special value of an L-function. I will explain how this result is established using a see-saw argument and the Siegel-Weil formula.

Notes

Week 4 (February 24): Theta dichotomy

Elad Zelingher

We discuss a local condition for the local theta lift not to vanish in the equal rank case of even unitary groups. This relation is expressed in terms of the root number associated to the representation in question. We use this relation to explain results about the non-vanishing of the global theta lift.

Notes

Week 5 (March 17): Unitary Shimura varieties

Calvin Yost-Wolff

This talk introduces the setting of the Kulda program we will study throughout the rest of the semester: unitary Shimura varieties. Geometrically, unitary Shimura varieties are arithmetic quotients of unit balls which are realizable as the complex points of a quasi-projective algebraic variety. Arithmetically, this variety descends to a variety over a totally real number field. Integrally, certain unions of these varieties represent a moduli problem which has an integral structure.

Week 6 (March 24): RTG: Special cycles and Kudla's generating function

Sean Cotner

We give a definition of special cycles on certain unitary Shimura varieties and use these to define Kudla's generating function, the subject of Kudla's modularity conjecture.