Organizing Committee
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.

Image for "Murmurations in Arithmetic"
Photo by Walter Baxter / A Murmuration of Starlings at Gretna / CC BY-SA 2.0

Confirmed Speakers & Participants

Talks will be presented virtually or in-person as indicated in the schedule below.

  • Speaker
  • Poster Presenter
  • Attendee
  • Virtual Attendee

Workshop Schedule

Thursday, July 6, 2023
  • 8:50 - 9:00 am EDT
    Welcome
    11th Floor Lecture Hall
    • Session Chair
    • Brendan Hassett, ICERM/Brown University
  • 9:00 - 9:45 am EDT
    Murmurations of L-functions
    11th 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 EDT
    Coffee Break
    11th Floor Collaborative Space
  • 10:30 - 11:15 am EDT
    TBA
    11th Floor Lecture Hall
    • Speaker
    • Jonathan Bober, University of Bristol
    • Session Chair
    • Kyu-Hwan Lee, University of Connecticut
  • 11:30 am - 12:15 pm EDT
    Murmurations of Dirichlet Characters
    11th 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 EDT
    Lunch/Free Time
  • 2:00 - 3:30 pm EDT
    Problem Session/ Panel Discussion
    Panel 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 EDT
    Coffee Break
    11th Floor Collaborative Space
  • 4:00 - 4:45 pm EDT
    From data science to murmurations
    11th 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 EDT
    Reception
    11th Floor Collaborative Space
Friday, July 7, 2023
  • 9:00 - 9:45 am EDT
    Biases of modular forms from the trace formula
    11th 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 EDT
    Coffee Break
    11th Floor Collaborative Space
  • 10:30 - 11:15 am EDT
    Murmurations and explicit formulas
    11th 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 EDT
    Root numbers and murmurations
    11th 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 EDT
    Group Photo (Immediately After Talk)
    11th Floor Lecture Hall
  • 12:30 - 2:00 pm EDT
    Lunch/Free Time
  • 2:00 - 2:45 pm EDT
    Applications of Moments of Dirichlet Coefficients in Elliptic Curve Families
    11th 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 EDT
    Coffee Break
    11th Floor Collaborative Space
  • 3:30 - 5:00 pm EDT
    Problem Session/ Panel Discussion
    Panel 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 EDT
    Star-like configurations in data related to the computation of L-values
    11th 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 EDT
    Coffee Break
    11th Floor Collaborative Space
  • 10:30 - 11:15 am EDT
    Average multiplicities
    11th 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 EDT
    TBD
    11th Floor Lecture Hall
    • Virtual Speaker
    • Nina Zubrilina, Princeton University
    • Session Chair
    • Thomas Oliver, Teesside University
  • 12:30 - 2:00 pm EDT
    Lunch/Free Time
  • 2:00 - 2:45 pm EDT
    Free Discussion
    Free Discussion - 11th Floor Collaborative Space
  • 3:00 - 3:30 pm EDT
    Coffee Break
    11th Floor Collaborative Space
  • 3:30 - 4:15 pm EDT
    Free Discussion
    Free Discussion - 11th Floor Collaborative Space

All event times are listed in ICERM local time in Providence, RI (Eastern Daylight Time / UTC-4).

All event times are listed in .

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