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Hausel Group: and Its Interfaces

Motivation Mirror How can we understand spaces too large for traditional analysis? Combining ideas When studying spaces from differential of view, one can highlight different from representation theory and , the Hausel group develops tools to aspects of their geometry by equipping the space in question X with different struc- study the of spaces arising from string theory and quantum field theory. tures. Two examples of this are:

Suppose you have many particles, and consider the space made up of all the ways symplectic structure, when X is thought of as the phase space of a physical each particle can move between two points. Now, play the same game with more • system; complicated objects, such as vector fields. The resulting spaces are too large to an- holomorphic structure, when X is cut out by (complex) analytic equations. alyze, but it is possible to simplify them along structural , giving rise to • moduli spaces that are finite-dimensional, but non-compact — again, defying tradi- It turns out that for certain spaces one can tional methods. The Hausel group studies the topology, geometry, and find a mirror partner X∨, which has these of these moduli spaces, which include the moduli spaces of Yang-Mills instantons in two aspects interchanged. This phenomenon four , and Higgs bundles in two dimensions, among others. goes under the name mirror symmetry. A Higgs bundle, just as its distant cousin the One can formulate this expectation in terms Higgs boson, is a connection together with an of equality of numerical invariants, namely auxiliary Higgs field. Their moduli space on Hodge . However, the more pro- a Riemann surface has an intricate geometry found way is to recast it as an equivalence of certain categories: with deep connections to integrable systems, b b D (Coh X) D (Fuk X∨). theory, and knot invariants. The fol- ' lowing is one of our central problems. An example where mirror symmetry is well understood is when X is a torus, and X is its dual. The SYZ conjecture tells us that all mirror pairs should generically Conjecture (Perversity equals weight). ∨ be of this form. The perverse filtration induced by the Hitchin integrable system on the cohomology of A specific example of SYZ picture is the moduli space of Higgs bundles , where the moduli space of Higgs bundles agrees with the weight filtration on the cohomology G G is a reductive group. Generically, it is a fibration in tori (the HitchinM fibration), of the character variety under the non-abelian Hodge correspondence: however singular fibers are notoriously difficult to handle. One can extract some Pi( Dol) = W i( B). b M 2 M information about those fibers by studying Hecke and Wilson operators on D ( G). It is known that mirror symmetry exchanges these two families of operators overM the Arithmetic geometry smooth locus of Hitchin fibration.

Problem. Show that generic mirror symmetry on GLn extends to an SL2(Z)- Arithmetic geometry is a connection between the discrete world of and equivariant action of an enhanced elliptic Hall .M continuous world of geometry and analysis. It studies number theoretic questions by recasting them in geometric terms. This allows for the use of the powerful machinery of . Geometric representation theory algebraic equations symmetries analysis Representation theory is the study of symmetry. The

Galois theory 1 symmetries are encoded by various algebraic objects, T ∗P one variable: finite Γ -sets number fields Q such as groups, , Lie algebras and so on, while their study often relies on powerful arguments coming ∩ Langlands’ from algebraic geometry. For example, Springer the- µ l-adic cohomology correspondence ory provides a geometric realization of representations several variables: Galois automorphic representations representations of the symmetric group S , as well as other Weyl groups. varieties over Q motives n Namely, one finds all finite-dimensional representations ∪ ∪ N ΓQ Class field theory as homology groups of the fibers of the Springer resolu- / Γ C× A× Q× C× Q → → tion, which is illustrated on the left for S2. Meanwhile, the Beilinson–Bernstein localization theorem describes representations Γ ab Q of reductive Lie algebras in terms of differential operators on the corresponding Arithmetic geometry also connects to physics, mirror symmetry and enumerative ge- flag variety. A final example is the geometric Satake theorem, which provides a ometry via the moduli of of genus g, which is the algebraic space parametrizing manifestation of the Langlands dual of a reductive group via perverse sheaves on the smooth algebraic curves of genus g. corresponding affine Grassmannian. Problem. What are the symplectic Galois groups acting on homology groups of the fibers of other symplectic resolutions, such as Nakajima quiver varieties?

Sandpile groups Problem. What is the zeta function of the moduli space of stable curves of genus Critical systems are formed at the junc- g over Z? Following Langlands philosophy, every L-function is an L-function of an tion of order and chaos, realizing in some automorphic representation, so can the L-function of the moduli of stable curves be Homological Sandpile cases a neighborhood of phase transi- algebra model described in automorphic terms? tion, and in others demonstrating self- organizing criticality. In real life there SOC Homotopical algebraic geometry are plenty of examples: everything about Mirror Tropical subtle fractality, long distance/time cor- symmetry geometry Homotopy theory is the study of shapes, more precisely topological spaces, up to relations, power-laws and so on. We do continuous deformations such as stretching, twisting, and bending. Algebraic geom- not know how to work adequately with them, we cannot predict anything, we don’t etry, on the other hand, is the study of algebraic varieties, solutions to systems of even understand how to study them. There is a conviction that they possess a polynomial equations, which are far more rigid than topological spaces. Interestingly, universal structure, but no one can say even approximately what this structure is. many subtle phenomena in algebraic geometry could be explained using ideas coming There are very few mathematically well-defined SOC from homotopy theory, resulting in numerous breakthroughs during the last decade. systems – the abelian sandpile model is historically As the most basic example, the map- the first and still the most popular one. It represents ping cone construction is a stan- an idealized process of gradually increasing pile of dard construction in homotopy the- sand, where we look at the of the sizes of ory, which, roughly speaking, pro- avalanches induced by adding an extra grain at a vides the homotopically correct way random site of a discrete domain. to take the difference between two ob- The model operates on the so-called sandpile group jects. It inspires a similarly named consisting of recurrent piles on the domain. Al- construction in homotopical algebra though it is a finite abelian group, it is usually ex- and thus plays an important role in tremely complicated, and contains a lot of ; homotopical algebraic geometry. for instance, the on the left depicts the neutral element. Recently, we have found an exceptional collection of monomorphisms between sandpile groups on lattice Problem. Let G be an algebraic re- , which allows to take an injective scaling limit. ductive group with maximal torus T , g = Lie G, and t = Lie T . Show that Problem. Show that the injective scaling limit of sandpile groups is - W SL2(Z) (T ∗(g/G)) (t t t[ 1]) . O 'O × × − invariant.