We prove that the tautological ring of ${\mathcal{M}}_{2,n}^{\mathsf{ct}}$ , the moduli space of $n$ -pointed genus two curves of compact type, does not have Poincaré duality for any $n\geqslant 8$ . This result is obtained via a more general study of the cohomology groups of ${\mathcal{M}}_{2,n}^{\mathsf{ct}}$ . We explain how the cohomology can be decomposed into pieces corresponding to different local systems and how the tautological cohomology can be identified within this decomposition. Our results allow the computation of $H^{k}({\mathcal{M}}_{2,n}^{\mathsf{ct}})$ for any $k$ and $n$ considered both as $\mathbb{S}_{n}$ -representation and as mixed Hodge structure/ $\ell$ -adic Galois representation considered up to semi-simplification. A consequence of our results is also that all even cohomology of $\overline{{\mathcal{M}}}_{2,n}$ is tautological for $n<20$ , and that the tautological ring of $\overline{{\mathcal{M}}}_{2,n}$ fails to have Poincaré duality for all $n\geqslant 20$ . This improves and simplifies results of the author and Orsola Tommasi.

We study Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms of closed symplectic manifolds with non-contractible periodic orbits. In a variety of settings, we show that the presence of one non-contractible periodic orbit of a Hamiltonian diffeomorphism of a closed toroidally monotone or toroidally negative monotone symplectic manifold implies the existence of infinitely many non-contractible periodic orbits in a specific collection of free homotopy classes. The main new ingredient in the proofs of these results is a filtration of Floer homology by the so-called augmented action. This action is independent of capping and, under favorable conditions, the augmented action filtration for toroidally (negative) monotone manifolds can play the same role as the ordinary action filtration for atoroidal manifolds.

We prove a level raising mod $\ell =2$ theorem for elliptic curves over $\mathbb{Q}$ . It generalizes theorems of Ribet and Diamond–Taylor and also explains different sign phenomena compared to odd $\ell$ . We use it to study the 2-Selmer groups of modular abelian varieties with common mod 2 Galois representation. As an application, we show that the 2-Selmer rank can be arbitrary in level raising families.

In this paper, we extend the notion of Shintani descent to general (possibly disconnected) algebraic groups defined over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ . For this, it is essential to treat all the pure inner $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ -rational forms of the algebraic group at the same time. We prove that the notion of almost characters (introduced by Shoji using Shintani descent) is well defined for any neutrally unipotent algebraic group, i.e. an algebraic group whose neutral connected component is a unipotent group. We also prove that these almost characters coincide with the ‘trace of Frobenius’ functions associated with Frobenius-stable character sheaves on neutrally unipotent groups. In the course of the proof, we also prove that the modular categories that arise from Boyarchenko and Drinfeld’s theory of character sheaves on neutrally unipotent groups are in fact positive integral, confirming a conjecture due to Drinfeld.

We compute the image of any choice of complex conjugation on the Galois representations associated to regular algebraic cuspidal automorphic representations and to torsion classes in the cohomology of locally symmetric spaces for $\text{GL}_{n}$ over a totally real field $F$ .

Let $K$ be a finite extension of $\mathbb{Q}_{p}$ and let $\bar{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}}$ be a continuous, absolutely irreducible representation of its absolute Galois group with values in a finite field of characteristic $p$ . We prove that the Galois representations that become crystalline of a fixed regular weight after an abelian extension are Zariski-dense in the generic fiber of the universal deformation ring of $\bar{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}}$ . In fact we deduce this from a similar density result for the space of trianguline representations. This uses an embedding of eigenvarieties for unitary groups into the spaces of trianguline representations as well as the corresponding density claim for eigenvarieties as a global input.

We clarify the relationship between Grothendieck duality à la Neeman and the Wirthmüller isomorphism à la Fausk–Hu–May. We exhibit an interesting pattern of symmetry in the existence of adjoint functors between compactly generated tensor-triangulated categories, which leads to a surprising trichotomy: there exist either exactly three adjoints, exactly five, or infinitely many. We highlight the importance of so-called relative dualizing objects and explain how they give rise to dualities on canonical subcategories. This yields a duality theory rich enough to capture the main features of Grothendieck duality in algebraic geometry, of generalized Pontryagin–Matlis duality à la Dwyer–Greenless–Iyengar in the theory of ring spectra, and of Brown–Comenetz duality à la Neeman in stable homotopy theory.

The mobility of a Kähler metric is the dimension of the space of metrics with which it is c-projectively equivalent. The mobility is at least two if and only if the Kähler metric admits a nontrivial hamiltonian 2-form. After summarizing this relationship, we present necessary conditions for a Kähler metric to have mobility at least three: its curvature must have nontrivial nullity at every point. Using the local classification of Kähler metrics with hamiltonian 2-forms, we describe explicitly the Kähler metrics with mobility at least three and hence show that the nullity condition on the curvature is also sufficient, up to some degenerate exceptions. In an appendix, we explain how the classification may be related, generically, to the holonomy of a complex cone metric.

In this paper we prove that a smooth family of canonically polarized manifolds parametrized by a special (in the sense of Campana) quasi-projective variety is isotrivial.

Given a family of varieties $X\rightarrow \mathbb{P}^{n}$ over a number field, we determine conditions under which there is a Brauer–Manin obstruction to weak approximation for 100% of the fibres which are everywhere locally soluble.

For each del Pezzo surface $S$ with du Val singularities, we determine whether it admits a $(-K_{S})$-polar cylinder or not. If it allows one, then we present an effective $\mathbb{Q}$-divisor $D$ that is $\mathbb{Q}$-linearly equivalent to $-K_{S}$ and such that the open set $S\setminus \text{Supp}(D)$ is a cylinder. As a corollary, we classify all the del Pezzo surfaces with du Val singularities that admit non-trivial $\mathbb{G}_{a}$-actions on their affine cones defined by their anticanonical divisors.

An affine symplectic singularity $X$ with a good $\mathbf{C}^{\ast }$-action is called a conical symplectic variety. In this paper we prove the following theorem. For fixed positive integers $N$ and $d$, there are only a finite number of conical symplectic varieties of dimension $2d$ with maximal weights $N$, up to an isomorphism. To prove the main theorem, we first relate a conical symplectic variety with a log Fano Kawamata log terminal (klt) pair, which has a contact structure. By the boundedness result for log Fano klt pairs with fixed Cartier index, we prove that conical symplectic varieties of a fixed dimension and with a fixed maximal weight form a bounded family. Next we prove the rigidity of conical symplectic varieties by using Poisson deformations.

We consider the distribution of the polygonal paths joining partial sums of classical Kloosterman sums $\text{Kl}_{p}(a)$ , as $a$ varies over $\mathbf{F}_{p}^{\times }$ and as $p$ tends to infinity. Using independence of Kloosterman sheaves, we prove convergence in the sense of finite distributions to a specific random Fourier series. We also consider Birch sums, for which we can establish convergence in law in the space of continuous functions. We then derive some applications.

For $n=3$, $4$, and 5, we prove that, when $S_{n}$-number fields of degree $n$ are ordered by their absolute discriminants, the lattice shapes of the rings of integers in these fields become equidistributed in the space of lattices.

Let $G$ be a real reductive group and $Z=G/H$ a unimodular homogeneous $G$ space. The space $Z$ is said to satisfy VAI (vanishing at infinity) if all smooth vectors in the Banach representations $L^{p}(Z)$ vanish at infinity, $1\leqslant p<\infty$ . For $H$ connected we show that $Z$ satisfies VAI if and only if it is of reductive type.

In this paper we propose and discuss implications of a general conjecture that there is a natural action of a rank 1 double affine Hecke algebra on the Kauffman bracket skein module of the complement of a knot $K\subset S^{3}$ . We prove this in a number of nontrivial cases, including all $(2,2p+1)$ torus knots, the figure eight knot, and all 2-bridge knots (when $q=\pm 1$ ). As the main application of the conjecture, we construct three-variable polynomial knot invariants that specialize to the classical colored Jones polynomials introduced by Reshetikhin and Turaev. We also deduce some new properties of the classical Jones polynomials and prove that these hold for all knots (independently of the conjecture). We furthermore conjecture that the skein module of the unknot is a submodule of the skein module of an arbitrary knot. We confirm this for the same example knots, and we show that this implies that the colored Jones polynomials of $K$ satisfy an inhomogeneous recursion relation.