Séminaire Géométrie et théorie des modèles

Let G be a connected locally compact group with a left Haar measure μ, and let A,B ⊆ G be nonempty and compact. Assume further that G is unimodular, i.e., μ is also the right Haar measure; this holds, e.g., when G is compact, a nilpotent Lie group, or a semisimple Lie group. In 1964, Kemperman showed that μ(AB) ≥ min {μ(A)+μ(B), μ(G)} . The Kemperman inverse problem (proposed by Griesmer, Kemperman, and Tao) asks when the equality happens or nearly happens. I will discuss the recent solution of this […]

This talk describes the connection between /strong minimality/ of the differential equation satisfied by an complex analytic function and the real and imaginary parts of the function being /Pfaffian/. The talk will not assume the audience knows these notions previously, and will attempt to motivate why each of them are important notions in various areas. The connection we give, combined with a theorem of Freitag and Scanlon (2017) provides the answer to a question of Binyamini and Novikov (2017). We also answer a question of Bianconi (2016). We give what […]

Let us say that a real function f is o-minimal if the expansion (R,f) of the real field by f is o-minimal. A function g is definable from f if g is definable in (R,f). Two o-minimal functions are compatible if there exists an o-minimal expansion M of the real field in which they are both definable. I will discuss the o-minimality, the interdefinability and the compatibility of two special functions, Euler's Gamma and Riemann's Zeta, restricted to the reals. If time allows it, I will present a general technique […]

In his influential paper “Tameness in expansions of the real field” from the early 2000s, Chris Miller wrote: “ What might it mean for a first-order expansion of the field of real numbers to be tame or well behaved? In recent years, much attention has been paid by model theorists and real-analytic geometers to the o-minimal setting: expansions of the real field in which every definable set has finitely many connected components. But there are expansions of the real field that define sets with infinitely many connected components, yet are […]

To a complex of l-adic sheaves on a quasi-projective variety one associate an integer, its complexity. The main result on the complexity is that it is continuous with tensor product, pullback and pushforward, providing effective version of the constructibility theorems in l-adic cohomology. Another key feature is that the complexity bounds the dimensions of the cohomology groups of the complex. This can be used to prove equidistribution results for exponential sums over finite fields. This is due to Will Sawin, written up in collaboration with Javier Fresán and Emmanuel Kowalski.

A σ-variety over a difference field (K,σ) is a pair (X,φ) consisting of an algebraic variety X over K and φ:X → X^σ is a regular map from X to its transform Xσ under σ. A subvariety Y ⊆ X is skew-invariant if φ(Y) ⊆ Y^σ. In earlier work with Alice Medvedev we gave a procedure to describe skew-invariant varieties of σ-varieties of the form (𝔸^n,φ) where φ(x_1,...,x_n) = (P_1(x_1),...,P_n(x_n)). The most important case, from which the others may be deduced, is that of n = 2. In the present […]

Over the last 15 years a remarkable link between o-minimality and algebraic/arithmetic geometry has been unfolding following the discovery of Pila-Wilkie's counting theorem and its applications around unlikely intersections, functional transcendence etc. While the counting theorem is nearly optimal in general, Wilkie has conjectured a much sharper form in the structure R_exp. There is a folklore expectation that such sharper bounds should hold in structures "coming from geometry", but for lack of a general formalism explicit conjectures have been made only for specific structures. I will describe a refinement of […]

Tilting perfectoid fields, developed by Scholze, allows to transfer results between certain henselian fields of mixed characteristic and their positive characteristic counterparts and vice versa. We present a model-theoretic approach to tilting via ultraproducts, which allows to transfer many first-order properties between a perfectoid field and its tilt (and conversely). In particular, our method yields a simple proof of the Fontaine-Wintenberger Theorem which states that the absolute Galois group of a perfectoid field and its tilt are canonically isomorphic. A key ingredient in our approach is an Ax-Kochen/Ershov principle for […]

In several classical families of differential equations such as the Painlevé families (Nagloo, Pillay) or finite dimensional families of Schwarzian differential equations (Blazquez-Sanz, Casale, Freitag, Nagloo), the following picture has been obtained regarding the transcendence properties of their solutions: - (Strong minimality): outside of an exceptional set of parameters, the corresponding differential equations are strongly minimal, - (Geometric triviality): algebraic independence of several solutions is controlled by pairwise algebraic independence outside of this exceptional set of parameters, - (Multidimensionality): the differential equations defined by generic independent parameters are orthogonal. Are […]

For a ring R, a subset of a cartesian power of R is said to be Diophantine if it is positive existentially definable over R with parameters from R. In general, Diophantine sets over rings are not well-understood even in very natural situations; for instance, we do not know if the ring of integers Z is Diophantine in the field of rational numbers. To show that a set is Diophantine requires to produce a particular existential formula that defines it. However, to show that a set is not Diophantine is […]

Les squelettes sont des sous-ensembles linéaires par morceaux d'espaces analytiques non-archimédiens apparaissant naturellement dans nombre de situations. Nous présenterons un résultat général de finitude, obtenu en collaboration avec A. Ducros, E. Hrushovski et J. Ye, concernant le groupe abélien ordonné des fonctions tropicales sur les squelettes des analytifiés de Berkovich de variétés algébriques. Notre approche utilise la version modèle théorique de l'analytification (la complétion stable) développée dans un travail antérieur avec E. Hrushovski.

In 2004 I proved that that if C is a transcendental curve definable in the structure R_{an}, then the number of points on C with integer coordinates of modulus less than H, is bounded by k loglog H for some constsnt k depending only on C. (The situation is vastly different for rational points.) The proof used the fact that such sets C are, in fact, semi-analytic everywhere-including infinity-and so the crux of the matter was to bound the number of solutions to equations of the form (*)    F(1/n) = […]