Organizing Committee
- Yang-Hui He
London Institute for Mathematical Sciences & Merton College, Oxford University - Kyu-Hwan Lee
University of Connecticut - Thomas Oliver
Teesside University
Abstract
Mathematicians have studied elliptic curves for decades, owing to their beautiful abstract structure, powerful applications in number theory and algebraic geometry, and practical relevance in cryptography. It is surprising, therefore, that the so-called murmuration phenomenon was first observed in 2022.
Murmurations can be observed through studying databases of arithmetic and automorphic objects, rather than through studying individual objects. The availability of such databases facilitates the application of machine learning (ML) and other data scientific tools. Indeed, murmuration was first discovered by simply taking averages of certain elliptic curve datasets, and it has been shown that various invariants of arithmetic objects can be learned successfully through standard ML techniques such as logistic regression, random forest and neural networks with high (often greater than 95%) accuracy in classification. This approach opens up many possible directions for other ML experiments, their interpretation, and, subsequently, new understanding. In this workshop, we will explore murmuration structures for other arithmetic and automorphic objects, explore the utility of other tools from ML, and seek to establish conjectures, heuristics, and, where possible, rigorous mathematical explanations.
This workshop will provide the opportunity to gather together a wide array of perspectives on elliptic curves, and other number theoretic objects, in the hope of developing structural theorems and applications of this new discovery to outstanding questions in arithmetic. The topic of this workshop also offers a timely opportunity to find directions along which we may further explore this new paradigm of research.
This workshop is partially funded by a Simons Foundation Targeted Grant to Institutes.
Confirmed Speakers & Participants
Talks will be presented virtually or in-person as indicated in the schedule below.
- Speaker
- Poster Presenter
- Attendee
- Virtual Attendee
-
Shabnam Akhtari
Pennsylvania State Unibversity
-
Samuele Anni
Aix - Marseille Université
-
Barinder Banwait
Boston University
-
Jonathan Bober
University of Bristol
-
Shiva Chidambaram
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
-
Fabien Cléry
ICERM
-
Alina Cojocaru
University of Illinois at Chicago
-
Edgar Costa
MIT
-
Alex Cowan
Harvard University
-
Noam Elkies
Harvard University
-
Claire Frechette
Boston College
-
Yang-Hui He
London Institute for Mathematical Sciences & Merton College, Oxford University
-
Kyu-Hwan Lee
University of Connecticut
-
Adam Logan
Government of Canada
-
David Lowry-Duda
ICERM & Brown University
-
Guillermo Mantilla-Soler
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
-
Kimball Martin
University of Oklahoma
-
Barry Mazur
Harvard University
-
Steven Miller
Williams College
-
Kumar Murty
University of Toronto
-
Thomas Oliver
Teesside University
-
Alexey Pozdnyakov
University of Connecticut
-
David Rohrlich
Boston University
-
Michael Rubinstein
University of Waterloo
-
Peter Sarnak
Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University
-
Joseph Silverman
Brown University
-
Katherine Stange
University of Colorado
-
Andrew Sutherland
MIT
-
David Tweedle
University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus
-
Nina Zubrilina
Princeton University
Workshop Schedule
Thursday, July 6, 2023
-
8:50 - 9:00 am EDTWelcome11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Session Chair
- Brendan Hassett, ICERM/Brown University
-
9:00 - 9:45 am EDTMurmurations of L-functions11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Speaker
- Andrew Sutherland, MIT
- Session Chair
- Kyu-Hwan Lee, University of Connecticut
Abstract
I will present joint work with Yang-Hui He, Kyu-Hwan Lee, Thomas Oilver, and Alexey Pozdnyakov that extends their disovery of osillations in Frobenius traces of elliptic curves when organized by parity and conductor to other arithmetic objects of interest, including modular forms and higher genus curves.
-
10:00 - 10:30 am EDTCoffee Break11th Floor Collaborative Space
-
10:30 - 11:15 am EDTTBA11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Speaker
- Jonathan Bober, University of Bristol
- Session Chair
- Kyu-Hwan Lee, University of Connecticut
-
11:30 am - 12:15 pm EDTMurmurations of Dirichlet Characters11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Speaker
- Alexey Pozdnyakov, University of Connecticut
- Session Chair
- Kyu-Hwan Lee, University of Connecticut
Abstract
Although murmurations were originally observed in the context of elliptic curves, it was soon discovered that this phenomenon occurred in other arithmetic contexts. Recent work with He, Lee, Oliver, and Sutherland showed that one can observe murmurations in many different families of L-functions. Simultaneously, Zubrilina provided a much needed theoretical explanation for murmurations by computing a local average over weight 2 modular newforms coming from all Galois orbit sizes. In my talk, I will provide a similar theoretical explanation in the context of degree 1 L-functions. In particular, I will compute a local average over Dirichlet characters of a fixed parity coming from all Galois orbit sizes, allowing us to predict the corresponding murmuration. This is based on recent work with Lee and Oliver.
-
12:30 - 2:00 pm EDTLunch/Free Time
-
2:00 - 3:30 pm EDTProblem Session/ Panel DiscussionPanel Discussion - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Session Chair
- Kyu-Hwan Lee, University of Connecticut
- Panelists
- Kimball Martin, University of Oklahoma
- Steven Miller, Williams College
- Andrew Sutherland, MIT
-
3:30 - 4:00 pm EDTCoffee Break11th Floor Collaborative Space
-
4:00 - 4:45 pm EDTFrom data science to murmurations11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Speaker
- Thomas Oliver, Teesside University
- Session Chair
- Kyu-Hwan Lee, University of Connecticut
Abstract
Murmurations were first observed in the context of data scientific experimentation. I will outline some of the machine learning techniques that were applied to the LMFDB prior to their discovery. I hope to give some explicit examples and discuss some relevant statistics for elliptic curves.
-
5:00 - 6:30 pm EDTReception11th Floor Collaborative Space
Friday, July 7, 2023
-
9:00 - 9:45 am EDTBiases of modular forms from the trace formula11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Speaker
- Kimball Martin, University of Oklahoma
- Session Chair
- Thomas Oliver, Teesside University
Abstract
I will discuss some biases of certain spectral biases of modular forms that one can prove with the trace formula. These include biases with respect to root number, Atkin-Lehner eigenvalues and Hecke eigenvalues. These biases explain some aspects of the murmuration phenomena.
-
10:00 - 10:30 am EDTCoffee Break11th Floor Collaborative Space
-
10:30 - 11:15 am EDTMurmurations and explicit formulas11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Speaker
- Alexander Cowan, Columbia university
- Session Chair
- Thomas Oliver, Teesside University
Abstract
We propose a heuristic explanation for murmurations based on the "explicit formula" from analytic number theory. A crucial ingredient in this heuristic is that the distribution of the zeros of the associated L-functions has a quasi-periodic structure. We present empirical results for both a family of elliptic curves as well as a family of quadratic Dirichlet characters that also exhibit murmurations.
-
11:30 am - 12:15 pm EDTRoot numbers and murmurations11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Speaker
- Peter Sarnak, Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University
- Session Chair
- Yang-Hui He, London Institute for Mathematical Sciences & Merton College, Oxford University
-
12:25 - 12:30 pm EDTGroup Photo (Immediately After Talk)11th Floor Lecture Hall
-
12:30 - 2:00 pm EDTLunch/Free Time
-
2:00 - 2:45 pm EDTApplications of Moments of Dirichlet Coefficients in Elliptic Curve Families11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Speaker
- Steven Miller, Williams College
- Session Chair
- Thomas Oliver, Teesside University
Abstract
We consider consequences of the first and second moments of the Dirichlet coefficients in one-parameter families of elliptic curves. Assuming standard conjectures (known for rational surfaces), Rosen and Silverman proved a conjecture of Nagao that the first moment is related to the rank; we use this to construct families of moderate rank by having large first moment sums. For non-CM one-parameter families, Michel proved the second moment of the Fourier coefficients is p^2 + O(p^{3/2}). Cohomological arguments show that the lower order terms are of sizes p^3/2, p, p^1/2 and 1. In every case we are able to analyze, the largest lower order term in the second moment expansion that does not average to zero is on average negative. The negative bias in these lower order terms has implications toward the excess rank conjecture and the behavior of zeros near the central point of elliptic curve L-functions.
-
3:00 - 3:30 pm EDTCoffee Break11th Floor Collaborative Space
-
3:30 - 5:00 pm EDTProblem Session/ Panel DiscussionPanel Discussion - 11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Session Chair
- Thomas Oliver, Teesside University
- Panelists
- Kimball Martin, University of Oklahoma
- Steven Miller, Williams College
- Andrew Sutherland, MIT
Saturday, July 8, 2023
-
9:00 - 9:45 am EDTStar-like configurations in data related to the computation of L-values11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Virtual Speaker
- Barry Mazur, Harvard University
- Session Chair
- Yang-Hui He, London Institute for Mathematical Sciences & Merton College, Oxford University
Abstract
In computation of special values of L-functions Karl Rubin and I have come up with some data that give pictures that are somewhat surprising to us. So far our computations aren’t substantial enough to make firm conjectures—let alone statements that we can prove—so this is work in the very early stages of . . . ‘progress.’ We would be grateful for any advice, and help, in accumulating more data.
-
10:00 - 10:30 am EDTCoffee Break11th Floor Collaborative Space
-
10:30 - 11:15 am EDTAverage multiplicities11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Speaker
- David Rohrlich, Boston University
- Session Chair
- Yang-Hui He, London Institute for Mathematical Sciences & Merton College, Oxford University
Abstract
A well-known folk conjecture predicts that the average rank of an elliptic curve over Q is 1/2. Given an irreducible Artin representation r of Q, one can ask for the average multiplicity of r in the Mordell-Weil group over Qbar of an elliptic curve over Q. If r is the trivial one-dimensional representation then one recovers the average rank. To illustrate some issues that arise if one wants to formulate an ""average multiplicity"" conjecture, we shall look at an example where r has dimension 4 and Schur index 1 and factors though a Galois group over Q of order 32.
-
11:30 am - 12:15 pm EDTTBD11th Floor Lecture Hall
- Virtual Speaker
- Nina Zubrilina, Princeton University
- Session Chair
- Thomas Oliver, Teesside University
-
12:30 - 2:00 pm EDTLunch/Free Time
-
2:00 - 2:45 pm EDTFree DiscussionFree Discussion - 11th Floor Collaborative Space
-
3:00 - 3:30 pm EDTCoffee Break11th Floor Collaborative Space
-
3:30 - 4:15 pm EDTFree DiscussionFree Discussion - 11th Floor Collaborative Space
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