Cellular A1-homology is a new homology theory for smooth algebraic varieties over a perfect field, which is often entirely computable and is expected to give the correct motivic analogue of Poincaré duality for smooth manifolds in classical topology. I will introduce cellular A1-homology, describe the precise conjectures about cellular A1-homology of smooth projective varieties and discuss how they can be verified for smooth projective rational surfaces. The talk is based on joint work with Fabien Morel.[-]

Real-analytic manifolds are studied very much in the last century until the time when people found the partition of unity on smooth manifolds makes the manifold theory very tractable. The group of real-analytic diffeomorphisms is the natural automorphism group of the real-analytic manifold. Because of the analytic continuation, there are no partition of unity by functions with support in balls. The germ at a point of a real-analytic diffeomorphism determines the diffeomorphism and hence the group of them looks rigid. However, the group of real-analytic diffeomorphisms is dense in the group of smooth diffeomorphisms and diffeomorphisms can exhibit all kinds of smooth stable dynamics. I would like to convince the audience that the group of real-analytic diffeomorphisms is a really interesting object.In the first course, I would like to review the theorem by Herman which says the identity component of the group of real analytic diffeomorphisms of the n-torus is simple, which gives a motivation to study the group for other manifolds. We also review several fundamental facts in the real analytic category.In the second course, we introduce the regimentation lemma which can play in the real analytic category the role of the partition of unity in the smooth category. For manifolds with nontrivial circle actions, we show that any real analytic diffeomorphism isotopic to the identity is homologous to a diffeomorphism which is an orbitwise rotation.In the third course, we state a lemma which says that the multiple actions of the standard action on the plane is a final (terminal) object in the category of circle actions. This lemma would imply that the identity component of the group of real analytic diffeomorphisms is perfect.[-]

I will explain how to combine tools of local tropical geometry and logarithmic geometry in order to study the structure of Milnor fibers of smoothings of isolated complex singularities, up to homeomorphisms. I will partly follow the paper “The Milnor fiber conjecture of Neumann and Wahl, and an overview of its proof”, written in collaboration with Marıa Angelica Cueto and Dmitry Stepanov.This course replaces a course on the same topic that should have been delivered by Angelica Cueto.[-]

I will explain how to combine tools of local tropical geometry and logarithmic geometry in order to study the structure of Milnor fibers of smoothings of isolated complex singularities, up to homeomorphisms. I will partly follow the paper “The Milnor fiber conjecture of Neumann and Wahl, and an overview of its proof”, written in collaboration with Marıa Angelica Cueto and Dmitry Stepanov.This course replaces a course on the same topic that should have been delivered by Angelica Cueto.[-]

How much cutting is needed to simplify the topology of a surface? We provide bounds for several instances of this question, for the minimum length of topologically non-trivial closed curves, pants decompositions, and cut graphs with a given combinatorial map in triangulated combinatorial surfaces (or their dual cross-metric counterpart).
Our work builds upon Riemannian systolic inequalities, which bound the minimum length of non-trivial closed curves in terms of the genus and the area of the surface. We first describe a systematic way to translate Riemannian systolic inequalities to a discrete setting, and vice-versa. This implies a conjecture by Przytycka and Przytycki from 1993, a number of new systolic inequalities in the discrete setting, and the fact that a theorem of Hutchinson on the edge-width of triangulated surfaces and Gromov's systolic inequality for surfaces are essentially equivalent. We also discuss how these proofs generalize to higher dimensions.
Then we focus on topological decompositions of surfaces. Relying on ideas of Buser, we prove the existence of pants decompositions of length $O(g^{3/2}n^{1/2})$ for any triangulated combinatorial surface of genus g with n triangles, and describe an $O(gn)$-time algorithm to compute such a decomposition.
Finally, we consider the problem of embedding a cut graph (or more generally a cellular graph) with a given combinatorial map on a given surface. Using random triangulations, we prove (essentially) that, for any choice of a combinatorial map, there are some surfaces on which any cellular embedding with that combinatorial map has length superlinear in the number of triangles of the triangulated combinatorial surface. There is also a similar result for graphs embedded on polyhedral triangulations.
systolic geometry - computational topology - topological graph theory - graphs on surfaces - triangulations - random graphs[-]

An endomorphism of a finitely generated free group naturally descends to an injective endomorphism on the stable quotient. We establish a geometric incarnation of this fact : an expanding irreducible train track map inducing an endomorphism of the fundamental group determines an expanding irreducible train track representative of the injective endomorphism of the stable quotient. As an application, we prove that the property of having fully irreducible monodromy for a splitting of a hyperbolic free-by-cyclic group G depends only on the component of the BNS invariant $\sum \left ( G \right )$ containing the associated homomorphism to the integers. In particular, it follows that if G is the mapping torus of an atoroidal fully irreducible automorphism of a free group and if the union of $\sum \left ( G \right ) $ and $\sum \left ( G \right )$ is connected then for every splitting of $G$ as a (f.g. free)-by-(infinite cyclic) group the monodromy is fully irreducible.
This talk is based on joint work with Spencer Dowdall and Christopher Leininger.[-]

Let $\overline{M_{g,n}}$ be the moduli space of stable curves of genus $g$ with $n$ marked points. It is a classical problem in algebraic geometry to determine which of these spaces are rational over $\mathbb{C}$. In this talk, based on joint work with Mathieu Florence, I will address the rationality problem for twisted forms of $\overline{M_{g,n}}$ . Twisted forms of $\overline{M_{g,n}}$ are of interest because they shed light on the arithmetic geometry of $\overline{M_{g,n}}$, and because they are coarse moduli spaces for natural moduli problems in their own right. A classical result of Yu. I. Manin and P. Swinnerton-Dyer asserts that every form of $\overline{M_{0,5}}$ is rational. (Recall that the $F$-forms $\overline{M_{0,5}}$ are precisely the del Pezzo surfaces of degree 5 defined over $F$.) Mathieu Florence and I have proved the following generalization of this result.
Let $ n\geq 5$ is an integer, and $F$ is an infinite field of characteristic $\neq$ 2.
(a) If $ n$ is odd, then every twisted $F$-form of $\overline{M_{0,n}}$ is rational over $F$.
(b) If $n$ is even, there exists a field extension $F/k$ and a twisted $F$-form of $\overline{M_{0,n}}$ which is unirational but not retract rational over $F$.
We also have similar results for forms of $\overline{M_{g,n}}$ , where $g \leq 5$ (for small $n$ ). In the talk, I will survey the geometric results we need about $\overline{M_{g,n}}$ , explain how our problem reduces to the Noether problem for certain twisted goups, and how this Noether problem can (sometimes) be solved.

Keywords: rationality - moduli spaces of marked curves - Galois cohomology - Noether's problem[-]

A variety X is stably rational if a product of X and some projective space is rational. There exists examples of stably rational non rational complex varieties. In this talk we will discuss recent series of examples of varieties, which are not stably rational and not even retract rational. The proofs involve studying the properties of Chow groups of zero-cycles and the diagonal decomposition. As concrete examples, we will discuss some quartic double solids (C. Voisin), quartic threefolds (a joint work with Colliot-Thélène), some hypersurfaces (Totaro) and others.[-]