Let n be a positive integer and f belong to the smallest ring of functions $\mathbb R^n\to \mathbb R$ that contains all real polynomial functions of n variables and is closed under exponentiation. Then there exists $d\in \mathbb N$ such that for all $m\in \{0,\dots , n\}$ and $c\in \mathbb R^{m}$, if $x\mapsto f(c,x)\colon \mathbb R^{n-m}\to \mathbb R$ is harmonic, then it is polynomial of degree at most d. In particular, f is polynomial if it is harmonic.

Let $\Omega _n$ be the ring of polynomial-valued holomorphic differential forms on complex n-space, referred to in physics as the superspace ring of rank n. The symmetric group ${\mathfrak {S}}_n$ acts diagonally on $\Omega _n$ by permuting commuting and anticommuting generators simultaneously. We let $SI_n \subseteq \Omega _n$ be the ideal generated by ${\mathfrak {S}}_n$-invariants with vanishing constant term and study the quotient $SR_n = \Omega _n / SI_n$ of superspace by this ideal. We calculate the doubly-graded Hilbert series of $SR_n$ and prove an ‘operator theorem’, which characterizes the harmonic space $SH_n \subseteq \Omega _n$ attached to $SR_n$ in terms of the Vandermonde determinant and certain differential operators. Our methods employ commutative algebra results that were used in the study of Hessenberg varieties. Our results prove conjectures of N. Bergeron, Colmenarejo, Li, Machacek, Sulzgruber, Swanson, Wallach and Zabrocki.

We investigate the geometry of codimension one foliations on smooth projective varieties defined over fields of positive characteristic with an eye toward applications to the structure of codimension one holomorphic foliations on projective manifolds.

Let k be a field of characteristic zero and $k^{[n]}$ the polynomial algebra in n variables over k. The LND conjecture concerning the images of locally nilpotent derivations arose from the Jacobian conjecture. We give a positive answer to the LND conjecture in several cases. More precisely, we prove that the images of rank-one locally nilpotent derivations of $k^{[n]}$ acting on principal ideals are MZ-subspaces for any $n\geq 2$, and that the images of a large class of locally nilpotent derivations of $k^{[3]}$ (including all rank-two and homogeneous rank-three locally nilpotent derivations) acting on principal ideals are MZ-subspaces.

Let k be a field of characteristic zero and let $\Omega_{A/k}$ be the universally finite differential module of a k-algebra A, which is the local ring of a closed point of an algebraic or algebroid curve over k. A notorious open problem, known as Berger’s Conjecture, predicts that A must be regular if $\Omega_{A/k}$ is torsion-free. In this paper, assuming the hypotheses of the conjecture and observing that the module ${\rm Hom}_A(\Omega_{A/k}, \Omega_{A/k})$ is then isomorphic to an ideal of A, say $\mathfrak{h}$, we show that A is regular whenever the ring $A/a\mathfrak{h}$ is Gorenstein for some parameter a (and conversely). In addition, we provide various characterizations for the regularity of A in the context of the conjecture.

A (folklore?) conjecture states that no holomorphic modular form $F(\tau )=\sum _{n=1}^{\infty } a_nq^n\in q\mathbb Z[[q]]$ exists, where $q=e^{2\pi i\tau }$, such that its anti-derivative $\sum _{n=1}^{\infty } a_nq^n/n$ has integral coefficients in the q-expansion. A recent observation of Broadhurst and Zudilin, rigorously accomplished by Li and Neururer, led to examples of meromorphic modular forms possessing the integrality property. In this note, we investigate the arithmetic phenomenon from a systematic perspective and discuss related transcendental extensions of the differentially closed ring of quasi-modular forms.

We discuss practical methods for computing the space of solutions to an arbitrary homogeneous linear system of partial differential equations with constant coefficients. These rest on the Fundamental Principle of Ehrenpreis–Palamodov from the 1960s. We develop this further using recent advances in computational commutative algebra.

Let K be a field of arbitrary characteristic, $${\cal A}$$ be a commutative K-algebra which is a domain of essentially finite type (e.g., the algebra of functions on an irreducible affine algebraic variety), $${a_r}$$ be its Jacobian ideal, and $${\cal D}\left( {\cal A} \right)$$ be the algebra of differential operators on the algebra $${\cal A}$$. The aim of the paper is to give a simplicity criterion for the algebra $${\cal D}\left( {\cal A} \right)$$: the algebra $${\cal D}\left( {\cal A} \right)$$ is simple iff $${\cal D}\left( {\cal A} \right)a_r^i{\cal D}\left( {\cal A} \right) = {\cal D}\left( {\cal A} \right)$$ for all i ≥ 1 provided the field K is a perfect field. Furthermore, a simplicity criterion is given for the algebra $${\cal D}\left( R \right)$$ of differential operators on an arbitrary commutative algebra R over an arbitrary field. This gives an answer to an old question to find a simplicity criterion for algebras of differential operators.

We prove the Lipman–Zariski conjecture for complex surface singularities with $p_{g}-g-b\leqslant 2$. Here $p_{g}$ is the geometric genus, $g$ is the sum of the genera of exceptional curves and $b$ is the first Betti number of the dual graph. This improves on a previous result of the second author. As an application, we show that a compact complex surface with a locally free tangent sheaf is smooth as soon as it admits two generically linearly independent twisted vector fields and its canonical sheaf has at most two global sections.

Let $W\subset \operatorname{GL}(V)$ be a complex reflection group and $\mathscr{A}(W)$ the set of the mirrors of the complex reflections in $W$. It is known that the complement $X(\mathscr{A}(W))$ of the reflection arrangement $\mathscr{A}(W)$ is a $K(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B},1)$ space. For $Y$ an intersection of hyperplanes in $\mathscr{A}(W)$, let $X(\mathscr{A}(W)^{Y})$ be the complement in $Y$ of the hyperplanes in $\mathscr{A}(W)$ not containing $Y$. We hope that $X(\mathscr{A}(W)^{Y})$ is always a $K(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B},1)$. We prove it in case of the monomial groups $W=G(r,p,\ell )$. Using known results, we then show that there remain only three irreducible complex reflection groups, leading to just eight such induced arrangements for which this $K(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B},1)$ property remains to be proved.

The factorial conjecture was proposed by van den Essen et al. [‘On the image conjecture’, J. Algebra 340(1) (2011), 211–224] to study the image conjecture, which arose from the Jacobian conjecture. We show that the factorial conjecture holds for all homogeneous polynomials in two variables. We also give a variation of the result and use it to show that the image of any linear locally nilpotent derivation of $\mathbb{C}[x,y,z]$ is a Mathieu–Zhao subspace.

We describe a general method for expanding a truncated $G$-iterative Hasse–Schmidt derivation, where $G$ is an algebraic group. We give examples of algebraic groups for which our method works.

We investigate images of higher-order differential operators of polynomial algebras over a field $k$ . We show that, when $\operatorname{char}k>0$ , the image of the set of differential operators $\{\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}_{i}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{i}\mid i=1,2,\ldots ,n\}$ of the polynomial algebra $k[\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}_{1},\ldots ,\unicode[STIX]{x1D709}_{n},z_{1},\ldots ,z_{n}]$ is a Mathieu subspace, where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{i}\in k[\unicode[STIX]{x2202}_{z_{1}},\ldots ,\unicode[STIX]{x2202}_{z_{n}}]$ for $i=1,2,\ldots ,n$ . We also show that, when $\operatorname{char}k=0$ , the same conclusion holds for $n=1$ . The problem concerning images of differential operators arose from the study of the Jacobian conjecture.

In this paper we study certain sheaves of $p$-adically complete rings of differential operators on semistable models of the projective line over the ring of integers in a finite extension $L$ of $\mathbb{Q}_{p}$. The global sections of these sheaves can be identified with (central reductions of) analytic distribution algebras of wide open congruence subgroups. It is shown that the global sections functor furnishes an equivalence between the categories of coherent module sheaves and finitely presented modules over the distribution algebras. Using the work of M. Emerton, we then describe admissible representations of $\text{GL}_{2}(L)$ in terms of sheaves on the projective limit of these formal schemes. As an application, we show that representations coming from certain equivariant line bundles on Drinfeld’s first étale covering of the $p$-adic upper half plane are admissible.

In this article, we prove a strong version of the local Bertini theorem for normality on local rings in mixed characteristic. The main result asserts that a generic hyperplane section of a normal, Cohen–Macaulay, and complete local domain of dimension at least 3 is normal. Applications include the study of characteristic ideals attached to torsion modules over normal domains, which is fundamental in the study of Euler system theory, Iwasawa's main conjectures, and the deformation theory of Galois representations.

Let K be a field of characteristic zero, and let R = K[X1,… ,Xn ]. Let An(K) = K⟨X1,… ,Xn,∂1,… ,∂n⟩ be the nth Weyl algebra over K. We consider the case when R and An (K) are graded by giving deg Xi = ωi and deg ∂i = –ωi for i = 1,…,n (here ωi are positive integers). Set . Let I be a graded ideal in R. By a result due to Lyubeznik the local cohomology modules are holonomic (An (K))-modules for each i≥0. In this article we prove that the de Rham cohomology modules are concentrated in degree —ω; that is, for j ≠ –ω. As an application when A = R/(f) is an isolated singularity, we relate to Hn-1 (∂(f);A), the (n – 1)th Koszul cohomology of A with respect to ∂1 (f),…, ∂n (f).

We show how the Selberg $\Lambda ^2$ -sieve can be used to obtain power saving error terms in a wide class of counting problems which are tackled using the geometry of numbers. Specifically, we give such an error term for the counting function of $S_5$ -quintic fields.

We deal with aspects of direct and inverse problems in parameterized Picard–Vessiot (PPV) theory. It is known that, for certain fields, a linear differential algebraic group (LDAG) $G$ is a PPV Galois group over these fields if and only if $G$ contains a Kolchin-dense finitely generated group. We show that, for a class of LDAGs $G$, including unipotent groups, $G$ is such a group if and only if it has differential type $0$. We give a procedure to determine if a parameterized linear differential equation has a PPV Galois group in this class and show how one can calculate the PPV Galois group of a parameterized linear differential equation if its Galois group has differential type $0$.

A type of generalized higher derivation consisting of a collection of self-mappings of a ring associated with a monoid, and here called a D-structure, is studied. Such structures were previously used to define various kinds of ‘skew’ or ‘twisted’ monoid rings. We show how certain gradings by monoids define D-structures. The monoid ring defined by such a structure corresponding to a group-grading is the variant of the group ring introduced by Năstăsescu, while in the case of a cyclic group of order two, the form of the D-structure itself yields some gradability criteria of Bakhturin and Parmenter. A partial description is obtained of the D-structures associated with infinite cyclic monoids.

The holonomic rank of the A-hypergeometric system MA(β) is the degree of the toric ideal IA for generic parameters; in general, this is only a lower bound. To the semigroup ring of A we attach the ranking arrangement and use this algebraic invariant and the exceptional arrangement of non-generic parameters to construct a combinatorial formula for the rank jump of MA(β). As consequences, we obtain a refinement of the stratification of the exceptional arrangement by the rank of MA(β) and show that the Zariski closure of each of its strata is a union of translates of linear subspaces of the parameter space. These results hold for generalized A-hypergeometric systems as well, where the semigroup ring of A is replaced by a non-trivial weakly toric module M⊆ℂ[ℤA] . We also provide a direct proof of the main result in [M. Saito, Isomorphism classes of A-hypergeometric systems, Compositio Math. 128 (2001), 323–338] regarding the isomorphism classes of MA (β) .