In this talk we look at polynomials having the property that all compositional iterates are irreducible, which we call dynamical irreducible. After surveying some previous results (mostly over finite fields), we will concentrate on the question of the dynamical irreducibility of integer polynomials being preserved in reduction modulo primes. More precisely, for a class of integer polynomials $f$, which in particular includes all quadratic polynomials, and also trinomials of some special form, we show that, under some natural conditions, he set of primes $p$ such that $f$ is dynamical irreducible modulo $p$ is of relative density zero. The proof of this result relies on a combination of analytic (the square sieve) and diophantine (finiteness of solutions to certain hyperelliptic equations) tools, which we will briefly describe.[-]

Given a finite connected undirected graph $X$, its fundamental group plays the role of the absolute Galois group of $X$. The familiar Galois theory holds in this setting. In this talk we shall discuss graph theoretical counter parts of several important theorems for number fields. Topics include
(a) Determination, up to equivalence, of unramified normal covers of $X$ of given degree,
(b) Criteria for Sunada equivalence,
(c) Chebotarev density theorem.
This is a joint work with Hau-Wen Huang.[-]

For a long time people have been interested in finding and constructing curves over finite fields with many points. For genus 1 and genus 2 curves, we know how to construct curves over any finite field of defect less than 1 or 3 (respectively), i.e. with a number of points at distance at most 1 or 3 to the upper bound given by the Hasse-Weil-Serre bound. The case of genus 3 is still open after more than 40 years of research. In this talk I will take a different approach based on the random matrix theory of Katz-Sarnak, that describe the distribution of the number of points, to prove the existence, for all $\epsilon>0$, of curves of genus $g$ over $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ with more than $1+q+(2 g-\epsilon) \sqrt{q}$ points for $q$ big enough. I will also discuss some explicit constructions as well as some details about the asymmetric of the distribution of the trace of the Frobenius for curves of genus 3 .This is a joint work with J. Bergström, E. Howe and C. Ritzenthaler.[-]

This is the introductory lecture of the course on class field theory in the Research school on Arithmetic Statistics in May 2023. It briefly reviews the necessary algebraic number theory, and presents class field theory as the analogue of the Kronecker-Weber theorem over number fields. In a similar way, the Chebotarev density theorem is treated as an analogue of the Dirichlet theorem on primes in arithmetic progressions.
Two further lectures dealt with idelic and cohomological reformulations of the main theorem of class field theory, and two more were devoted to power reciprocity laws and Redei reciprocity.[-]

Let $L/K$ be an extension of number fields. The norm map $N_{L/K} :L^{*}\to K^{*}$ extends to a norm map from the ideles of L to those of $K$. The Hasse norm principle is said to hold for $L/K$ if, for elements of $K^{*}$, being in the image of the idelic norm map is equivalent to being the norm of an element of L^{*}. The frequency of failure of the Hasse norm principle in families of abelian extensions is fairly well understood, thanks to previous work of Christopher Frei, Daniel Loughran and myself, as well as recent work of Peter Koymans and Nick Rome. In this talk, I will focus on the non-abelian setting and discuss joint work with Ila Varma on the statistics of the Hasse norm principle in field extensions with normal closure having Galois group $S_{4}$ or $S_{5}$.[-]

We discuss Arithmetic Statistics as a 'new' branch of number theory by briefly sketching its development in the last 50 years. The non-triviality of the meaning of `random behaviour' and the problematic absence of good probability measures on countably infinite sets are illustrated by the example of the 1983 Cohen-Lenstra heuristics for imaginary quadratic class groups. We then focus on the Negative Pell equation, of which the random behaviour in the case of fundamental discriminants (Stevenhagen's conjecture) has now been established after 30 years.
We explain the open conjecture for the general case, which is based on equidistribution results for units over residue classes that remain to be proved.[-]