Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Mathematik

Dear colleagues,

please find attached the invitation to the COLLOQUIUM OF THE INSTITUTE of
MATHEMATICS. A talk is given by

Prof. Dr. Rahul Pandharipande
ETH Zurich

on "Counting curves on K3 surfaces and modular forms"

The Colloquium  takes place on 03.02.2015 at 17 c.t. in the von Neumann
Haus in room 1.013.

Abstract:
I will discuss the enumeration of curves on K3 surfaces: both the classical roots in projective geometry and the modern successes (connected to modular forms). How many tri-tangent planes does a quartic surface have? The answer, when appropriately counted, is 3200 -- the q^2 coefficient of the Fourier expansion of the inverse of the discriminant modular form. This connection was first noticed by Yau and Zaslow in 1995. In the last two decades, all such counting question for K3 surfaces have been connected to modular forms. I will present both the results and the open directions in the subject.

About the speaker:
Rahul Pandharipande is one of the most prominent algebraic geometers in
the world today, having made fundamental contributions to the study of
moduli spaces and enumerative geometry.  Among his outstanding achievements we mention ground-breaking work with Andrei Okounkov on Gromov-Witten theory and the discovery of the Gromov-Witten/Donaldson-Thomas correspondence. In the moduli space of curves, due to a large extend to the work of Pandharipande, we are witnessing a paradigm change comparable to that which took place in
Schubert calculus in the 19th century.

After holding Full Professor positions at Caltech and Princeton, Rahul Pandharipande moved to ETH Zurich in 2011. He was an invited speaker at the ICM in 2002. His work has been recognized with numerous prizes, including the Compositio Prize (2010), the Clay Research Prize (2013), the Infosys Prize (2013) and an ERC Advanced Grant. He is an editor of Inventiones Math.
Starting 2015, Pandharipande is an Einstein Visiting Fellow at HU Berlin.

I am looking forward to seeing you at the talk.

Best regards,

Gavril Farkas