Ari Shnidman (Hebrew University/IAS)
Event Date
2025-04-11
Event Time
10:30 am ~ 11:30 am
Event Location
Wachman Hall 617
Abstract: Selmer groups are a cohomological tool for finding rational points on elliptic curves and abelian varieties in general. I'll explain how they work in down to earth terms and give some applications to concrete questions such as: What is the average rank of an elliptic curve over Q? How many integers can be written as a sum of two rational cubes? Is there an algorithm to determine solubility of diophantine equations over a given finitely generated ring? This is also setup for the afternoon talk, where we will apply the Selmer framework to study class groups of number fields.