Complex and tropical counts via positive characteristic

We study two classical families of enumerative problems: inflection lines of plane curves and theta-hyperplanes of canonical curves. In these problems the complex counts and the tropical counts disagree. Each problem suggests a prime with special behavior. On the one hand, we analyze the reduction modulo these special primes, and we prove that the complex solutions coalesce in uniform clusters. On the other hand, we observe that the counts in special characteristic and in tropical geometry match.     

Tame characters and ramification of finite flat group schemes

In this paper, for a complete discrete valuation field K of mixed characteristic (0,p) and a finite flat group scheme G of p-power order over OK, we determine the tame characters appearing in the Galois representation in terms of the ramification theory of Abbes and Saito, without any restriction on the absolute ramification index of K or the embedding dimension of G.     

Compact Manifolds Covered by a Torus

Let X be a compact complex manifold which is the image of a complex torus by a holomorphic surjective map A→X. We prove that X is Kähler and that up to a finite étale cover, X is a product of projective spaces by a torus.     

Ramification of Valuations and Local Rings in Positive Characteristic

In characteristic zero, local monomialization is true along any valuation. However, we have recently shown that local monomialization is not always true in positive characteristic, even in two dimensional algebraic function fields. In this paper we show that local monomialization is true for defectless extensions of two dimensional excellent local rings, extending an earlier result of Piltant and the author for two dimensional algebraic function fields over an algebraically closed field. We also give theorems showing that in many cases there are good stable forms of the extension of associated graded rings in a finite separable field extension.     

Strong coprimality and strong irreducibility of Alexander polynomials

A polynomial f(t) with rational coefficients is strongly irreducible if f(tk) is irreducible for all positive integers k. Likewise, two polynomials f and g are strongly coprime if f(tk) and g(tl) are relatively prime for all positive integers k and l. We provide some sufficient conditions for strong irreducibility and prove that the Alexander polynomials of twist knots are pairwise strongly coprime and that most of them are strongly irreducible. We apply these results to describe the structure of the subgroup of the rational knot concordance group generated by the twist knots and to provide an explicit set of knots which represent linearly independent elements deep in the solvable filtration of the knot concordance group.     

Ramification of valuations

In this paper we develop a very explicit theory of ramification of general valuations in algebraic function fields. In characteristic zero and arbitrary dimension, we obtain the strongest possible generalization of the classical ramification theory of local Dedekind domains. We further develop a ramification theory of algebraic functions fields of dimension two in positive characteristic. We prove that local monomialization and simultaneous resolution hold under very mild assumptions, and give pathological examples.     

Ramification of a finite flat group scheme over a local field

In this paper, we analyze ramification in the sense of Abbes-Saito of a finite flat group scheme over the ring of integers of a complete discrete valuation field of mixed characteristic (0,p). We deduce that its Galois representation depends only on its reduction modulo explicitly computed p-power. We also give a new proof of a theorem of Fontaine on ramification of a finite flat Galois representation, and extend it to the case where the residue field may be imperfect.     

The entropic discriminant

The entropic discriminant is a non-negative polynomial associated to a matrix. It arises in contexts ranging from statistics and linear programming to singularity theory and algebraic geometry. It describes the complex branch locus of the polar map of a real hyperplane arrangement, and it vanishes when the equations defining the analytic center of a linear program have a complex double root. We study the geometry of the entropic discriminant, and we express its degree in terms of the characteristic polynomial of the underlying matroid. Singularities of reciprocal linear spaces play a key role. In the corank-one case, the entropic discriminant admits a sum of squares representation derived from the discriminant of a characteristic polynomial of a symmetric matrix.