Departmental Colloquium
Akshay Venkatesh
Stanford
ATKIN LECTURE: Cohen-Lenstra heuristics
Abstract: I will discuss some models of what a "random abelian group"
is, and some conjectures (the Cohen-Lenstra heuristics of the title)
about how they show up in number theory. I'll then discuss
the function field setting and a proof of these heuristics,
with Ellenberg and Westerland. The proof is an example of a link between analytic number theory and certain classes of results in algebraic topology ("homological stability").
Friday May 3, 2013 at 3:00 PM in Lecture Center F4 (please note special location)