Author Archives: Persiflage

En Passant VII

Idle question which has surely been asked (and answered!). If \(X^{+}_{\mathrm{nsp}}(p)\) is the modular curve corresponding to the normalizer of the non-split Cartan, then one reason it is hard to find all rational points is that the all factors of … Continue reading

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Chidambaram on genus two curves, I

Before we start, just to alert you to a minor blogpage design change: all the posts (including this one) which talk about my students work can be accessed in one place by clicking the “work of my students” tab just … Continue reading

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How to reject a paper

I just had the paper discussed in this post very quickly rejected. Since it was such a short paper, I thought it not too unreasonable to submit it to a strong journal, so I am not terribly disappointed. I can … Continue reading

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You are welcome, Northwestern junior faculty

Nobody has even accused Persiflage of being afraid to speak truth to power. After Chicago made their announcement that they were extending tenure by one year for all (qualified) faculty, I thought that, as a good local citizen of Evanston, … Continue reading

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More on Lehmer’s Conjecture

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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The Hausdorff Trimester has been indefinitely postponed

I’m not sure if this is 100% official yet, but the Hausdorff Trimester scheduled for this summer has been (unsurprisingly) postponed. This is probably no great surprise to many of you. We have hopes to reschedule it again (perhaps for … Continue reading

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NSF Proposal, Graduate Fellowship Edition

Note: I feel as a service to the number theory entertainment complex that I should blog more often in these times, even if it means being less coherent than usual. I might even try to get a few guest posts … Continue reading

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The Arbeitsgemeinschaft has been indefinitely postponed

An update on the last post: As you probably already know by now if you are a participant, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft has been indefinitely postponed. The recommendation to do so was made by the organizers as universities rapidly began to recommend … Continue reading

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Conferences New and Old: Coronavirus Edition

A number of people have asked me whether the various conferences and workshops I am organizing this summer are still running. I thought I would have a blogpost containing all the current information, which I can update when and if … Continue reading

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Counting solutions to a_p = λ, Part II

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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