Series:

Annals of Mathematics Studies

4 primary works • 5 total works

Book 116

Cover of Gauss Sums, Kloosterman Sums, and Monodromy Groups. (AM-116)
The study of exponential sums over finite fields, begun by Gauss nearly two centuries ago, has been completely transformed in recent years by advances in algebraic geometry, culminating in Deligne's work on the Weil Conjectures. It now appears as a very attractive mixture of algebraic geometry, representation theory, and the sheaf-theoretic incarnations of such standard constructions of classical analysis as convolution and Fourier transform. The book is simultaneously an account of some of these ideas, techniques, and results, and an account of their application to concrete equidistribution questions concerning Kloosterman sums and Gauss sums.

Book 150

Cover of Twisted L-Functions and Monodromy. (AM-150), Volume 150

For hundreds of years, the study of elliptic curves has played a central role in mathematics. The past century in particular has seen huge progress in this study, from Mordell's theorem in 1922 to the work of Wiles and Taylor-Wiles in 1994. Nonetheless, there remain many fundamental questions where we do not even know what sort of answers to expect. This book explores two of them: What is the average rank of elliptic curves, and how does the rank vary in various kinds of families of elliptic curves?


Nicholas Katz answers these questions for families of ''big'' twists of elliptic curves in the function field case (with a growing constant field). The monodromy-theoretic methods he develops turn out to apply, still in the function field case, equally well to families of big twists of objects of all sorts, not just to elliptic curves.


The leisurely, lucid introduction gives the reader a clear picture of what is known and what is unknown at present, and situates the problems solved in this book within the broader context of the overall study of elliptic curves. The book's technical core makes use of, and explains, various advanced topics ranging from recent results in finite group theory to the machinery of l-adic cohomology and monodromy. Twisted L-Functions and Monodromy is essential reading for anyone interested in number theory and algebraic geometry.

Book 159

Cover of Moments, Monodromy, and Perversity. (AM-159)
It is now some thirty years since Deligne first proved his general equidistribution theorem, thus establishing the fundamental result governing the statistical properties of suitably "pure" algebro-geometric families of character sums over finite fields (and of their associated L-functions). Roughly speaking, Deligne showed that any such family obeys a "generalized Sato-Tate law," and that figuring out which generalized Sato-Tate law applies to a given family amounts essentially to computing a certain complex semisimple (not necessarily connected) algebraic group, the "geometric monodromy group" attached to that family. Up to now, nearly all techniques for determining geometric monodromy groups have relied, at least in part, on local information.In "Moments, Monodromy, and Perversity", Nicholas Katz develops new techniques, which are resolutely global in nature. They are based on two vital ingredients, neither of which existed at the time of Deligne's original work on the subject.
The first is the theory of perverse sheaves, pioneered by Goresky and MacPherson in the topological setting and then brilliantly transposed to algebraic geometry by Beilinson, Bernstein, Deligne, and Gabber. The second is Larsen's Alternative, which very nearly characterizes classical groups by their fourth moments. These new techniques, which are of great interest in their own right, are first developed and then used to calculate the geometric monodromy groups attached to some quite specific universal families of (L-functions attached to) character sums over finite fields.

Book 180

Cover of Convolution and Equidistribution
Convolution and Equidistribution explores an important aspect of number theory--the theory of exponential sums over finite fields and their Mellin transforms--from a new, categorical point of view. The book presents fundamentally important results and a plethora of examples, opening up new directions in the subject. The finite-field Mellin transform (of a function on the multiplicative group of a finite field) is defined by summing that function against variable multiplicative characters. The basic question considered in the book is how the values of the Mellin transform are distributed (in a probabilistic sense), in cases where the input function is suitably algebro-geometric. This question is answered by the book's main theorem, using a mixture of geometric, categorical, and group-theoretic methods. By providing a new framework for studying Mellin transforms over finite fields, this book opens up a new way for researchers to further explore the subject.

Cover of Rigid Local Systems. (AM-139), Volume 139

Riemann introduced the concept of a "local system" on P1-{a finite set of points} nearly 140 years ago. His idea was to study nth order linear differential equations by studying the rank n local systems (of local holomorphic solutions) to which they gave rise. His first application was to study the classical Gauss hypergeometric function, which he did by studying rank-two local systems on P1- {0,1,infinity}. His investigation was successful, largely because any such (irreducible) local system is rigid in the sense that it is globally determined as soon as one knows separately each of its local monodromies. It became clear that luck played a role in Riemann's success: most local systems are not rigid. Yet many classical functions are solutions of differential equations whose local systems are rigid, including both of the standard nth order generalizations of the hypergeometric function, n
F
n-1's, and the Pochhammer hypergeometric functions.


This book is devoted to constructing all (irreducible) rigid local systems on P1-{a finite set of points} and recognizing which collections of independently given local monodromies arise as the local monodromies of irreducible rigid local systems.


Although the problems addressed here go back to Riemann, and seem to be problems in complex analysis, their solutions depend essentially on a great deal of very recent arithmetic algebraic geometry, including Grothendieck's etale cohomology theory, Deligne's proof of his far-reaching generalization of the original Weil Conjectures, the theory of perverse sheaves, and Laumon's work on the l-adic Fourier Transform.