Embedded Files
LATEST NEWS: Watch this space....
Welcome to the Stark-SIC Seminar in 2025/6!
Please note the new usual start time this year which is half-an-hour earlier than last year:
11:00 Eastern (US) / 16:00 UK / 17:00 Central Europe
Talks will typically last for 50 minutes plus 10 minutes of questions from the audience.
Upcoming Talks
Date: 27th October, 2026
Time: 12:00 Eastern (US) Time (Daylight Savings) / 16:00 Greenwich Mean time / 17:00 Central European Time
NB: If you're in (most of) the US or Canada please note the unusual time for this talk.
Explanation: the clocks will not have gone back there yet; they will have in the UK and Europe.
Speaker: Danylo Radchenko (IHES)
Title: Finite quantum dilogarithms and Stark reciprocity laws
Abstract: This will be a continuation of the talk by Campbell Wheeler. I will discuss further properties of finite quantum dilogarithms, give an outline of the (mostly AI-generated) proof of reciprocity laws for the special values of Faddeev's modular quantum dilogarithm, and describe their application to Zauner's conjecture.
Date: 10th November 2026
Time: 11:00 Eastern (US) Time / 16:00 Greenwich Mean Time / 17:00 Central European Time
Speakers: Joseph Iverson (Iowa State) and Kean Fallon (Iowa State)
Title: Conference Signals
Abstract: to follow
Date: 24th November 2026
Time: 11:00 Eastern (US) Time / 16:00 Greenwich Mean Time / 17:00 Central European Time
Speaker: Harshit Yadav (MPI, Bonn)
Title and Abstract: to follow
Seminar Organisers: Gene Kopp and David Solomon.
Seminar Organisers: Gene Kopp and David Solomon.
For more information, to propose a talk or to receive the biweekly email, please contact: david dot solomon314 at gmail dot com
For more information, to propose a talk or to receive the biweekly email, please contact: david dot solomon314 at gmail dot com
Subject Matter of the Seminar
The first part of the seminar title refers to the S-units of global fields predicted by the well-known rank-1, complex Stark conjecture for abelian L-functions (cf Tate's book Les Conjectures de Stark sur les Fonctions L d'Artin en s=0, Birkhauser, 1984). They have strong connections to Hilbert's 12th problem/explicit abelian class field theory.
The second part of the title refers to SIC-POVMs (in brief, maximal equiangular sets of lines in C^d). Research into SICs originated in quantum information theory and finite frame theory, and that work is less well-known to number theorists. It has, however, burgeoned over the last 25 years, driven in part by Zauner's 1999 conjecture and extensive computational work by Grassl, Scott et al. which revealed apparent links to Stark units on the one hand and to the representations of finite Heisenberg groups and their automorphism groups on the other.
The third part of the title refers to the fact that the seminar is also open to talks on a variety of topics related to the above two main themes. A non-exhaustive list might include: other (e.g., p-adic) aspects of Stark's conjectures and/or Hilbert's 12th Problem, Theta functions, L-function values, Related cocycles on SL_2(Z) and similar groups, Weil representations, Quantum designs, Mutually unbiased bases (MUBs).....
Slides of last year's talks displaying the range of topics in 2025/6 can be found here
Please note: his is a research seminar. Talks containing both published work and work in progress are welcome. An atmosphere of discussion is encouraged.
Past talks this year (2026/7): slides, recordings etc (where available)
13th September 2026
Title: Real quadratic fields and quantum dilogs
Speaker: Campbell Wheeler
Campbell Wheeler real.quad.pdfPage updated
Google Sites
Report abuse