Commutative Algebra and Algebraic Geometry Seminar

The seminar meets on selected Fridays 4:00-5:00 PM at the CUNY Graduate Center, room 4214.03 (math thesis room). The CUNY Graduate Center is located at 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016.

Organizers:

Laura Ghezzi, New York City College of Technology and the Graduate Center (CUNY), laura.ghezzi58@citytech.cuny.edu

Hans Schoutens, New York City College of Technology and the Graduate Center (CUNY), hschoutens@citytech.cuny.edu

Fei Ye, Queensborough Community College and the Graduate Center (CUNY), feye@qcc.cuny.edu

Spring 2025 dates: February 28, March 14, March 28, April 25, May 9

February 28, 2025 GC 4214.03

Speaker: Andrew Stout, BMCC (CUNY)

Title: Jets of Local Complete Intersection Morphisms

Abstract: I will give the natural conditions for which the enriched Hom functor (the jet operator) induces a local complete intersection (LCI) morphism given a LCI morphism of schemes. This subsumes my previous work on induced flatness. In addition, it turns out that this is the relativized version of well-known results of Mustata which were used by Eisenbud and Frenkel to prove an important generalization of a theorem of Kostant concerning the nilpotent cone of a Lie algebra. This talk will be accessible to a general mathematical audience. 

March 14, 2025 GC 4214.03

Speaker: Fanjun Meng, Johns Hopkins University

Title: Wall crossing for moduli of stable pairs

Abstract: Hassett showed that there are natural reduction morphisms between moduli spaces of weighted pointed stable curves when we reduce weights. I will discuss some joint work with Ziquan Zhuang which constructs similar morphisms between moduli of stable pairs in higher dimension.

March 28, 2025 GC 4214.03

Speaker: Sylvan Crane (HSAS-Lehman) and Alexis Menenses (MIT)

Title: Invariant fields of Z/pZ and geometry of numbers

Abstract: Based on computational data, Blum-Smith, Garcia, Hidalgo, and Rodriguez recently conjectured that the field of rational invariants of a representation of Z/pZ, is generated by invariant polynomials of degree at most ceil(p / ceil(m/2)), where m is the number of distinct nontrivial isotypic components in the representation.

In this talk, we prove that this bound holds for fixed m and sufficiently high p, if one is willing to relax the requirement to invariant rational (not necessarily polynomial) functions as generators. We also show this statement fails if one replaces p with a not-necessarily-prime natural number n, and we analyze what goes wrong in the proof. We also discuss the question of whether the generators can be taken to be polynomial. In particular, we prove that, for m≥3, there is always at least a transcendence basis of degree at most (p+1)/2 that is polynomial; this is sharp for m=3.

The methods are based on studying Euclidean lattices, using convexity arguments and Minkowski’s geometry of numbers.

This talk is based on joint work with Ben Blum-Smith, Karla Guzman, and Maxine Song-Hurewitz.

April 25, 2025 GC 4214.03

Speaker: TBA

Title: TBA

Abstract: TBA

May 9, 2025 GC 4214.03

SpeakerJames Myer, CUNY Graduate Center

Title: TBA

Abstract: TBA