We determine the smallest irreducible Brauer characters for finite quasi-simple orthogonal type groups in non-defining characteristic. Under some restrictions on the characteristic we also prove a gap result showing that the next larger irreducible Brauer characters have a degree roughly the square of those of the smallest non-trivial characters.

The Corners theorem states that for any α > 0 there exists an N0 such that for any abelian group G with |G| = N ≥ N0 and any subset A ⊂ G×G with |A| ≥ αN2 we can find a corner in A, i.e. there exist x, y, d ∈ G with d ≠ 0 such that (x,y),(x+d,y),(x,y+d) ∈ A.

Here, we consider a stronger version, in which we try to find many corners of the same size. Given such a group G and subset A, for each d ∈ G we define Sd={(x,y) ∈ G × G: (x,y),(x+d,y),(x,y+d) ∈ A}. So |Sd| is the number of corners of size d. Is it true that, provided N is sufficiently large, there must exist some d ∈G\{0} such that |Sd|>(α3-ϵ)N2?

We answer this question in the negative. We do this by relating the problem to a much simpler-looking problem about random variables. Then, using this link, we show that there are sets A with |Sd|>Cα3.13N2 for all d ≠ 0, where C is an absolute constant. We also show that in the special case where $G = {\mathbb{F}}_2^n$, one can always find a d with |Sd|>(α4-ϵ)N2.

We study the stationary descendant Gromov–Witten theory of toric surfaces by combining and extending a range of techniques – tropical curves, floor diagrams and Fock spaces. A correspondence theorem is established between tropical curves and descendant invariants on toric surfaces using maximal toric degenerations. An intermediate degeneration is then shown to give rise to floor diagrams, giving a geometric interpretation of this well-known bookkeeping tool in tropical geometry. In the process, we extend floor diagram techniques to include descendants in arbitrary genus. These floor diagrams are then used to connect tropical curve counting to the algebra of operators on the bosonic Fock space, and are showno coincide with the Feynman diagrams of appropriate operators. This extends work of a number of researchers, including Block–Göttsche, Cooper–Pandharipande and Block–Gathmann–Markwig.

Let k be a finite field of characteristic p, and G a compact p-adic analytic group. Write kG for the completed group ring of G over k. In this paper, we describe the structure of the ring kG/P, where P is a minimal prime ideal of kG. We give an explicit isomorphism between kG/P and a matrix ring with coefficients in the ring ${(k'G')_\alpha }$ , where $k'/k$ is a finite field extension, $G'$ is a large subquotient of G with no finite normal subgroups, and (–)α is a “twisting” operation that preserves many desirable properties of the ring structure. We demonstrate the usefulness of this isomorphism by studying the correspondence induced between certain ideals of kG and those of ${(k'G')_\alpha }$ , and showing that this preserves many useful “group-theoretic” properties of ideals, in particular almost-faithfulness and control by a closed normal subgroup.

For a compact abelian group G, a corner in G × G is a triple of points (x, y), (x, y+d), (x+d, y). The classical corners theorem of Ajtai and Szemerédi implies that for every α > 0, there is some δ > 0 such that every subset A ⊂ G × G of density α contains a δ fraction of all corners in G × G, as x, y, d range over G.

Recently, Mandache proved a “popular differences” version of this result in the finite field case $G = {\mathbb{F}}_p^n$, showing that for any subset A ⊂ G × G of density α, one can fix d ≠ 0 such that A contains a large fraction, now known to be approximately α4, of all corners with difference d, as x, y vary over G. We generalise Mandache’s result to all compact abelian groups G, as well as the case of corners in $\mathbb{Z}^2$.

We study a set $\mathcal{M}_{K,N}$ parameterising filtered SL(K)-Higgs bundles over $\mathbb{C}P^1$ with an irregular singularity at $z = \infty$, such that the eigenvalues of the Higgs field grow like $\vert \lambda \vert \sim \vert z^{N/K} \mathrm{d}z \vert$, where K and N are coprime. $\mathcal{M}_{K,N}$ carries a $\mathbb{C}^\times$-action analogous to the famous $\mathbb{C}^\times$-action introduced by Hitchin on the moduli spaces of Higgs bundles over compact curves. The construction of this $\mathbb{C}^\times$-action on $\mathcal{M}_{K,N}$ involves the rotation automorphism of the base $\mathbb{C}P^1$. We classify the fixed points of this $\mathbb{C}^\times$-action, and exhibit a curious 1-1 correspondence between these fixed points and certain representations of the vertex algebra $\mathcal{W}_K$ ; in particular we have the relation $\mu = {k-1-c_{\mathrm{eff}}}/{12}$ , where $\mu$ is a regulated version of the L2 norm of the Higgs field, and $c_{\mathrm{eff}}$ is the effective Virasoro central charge of the corresponding W-algebra representation. We also discuss a Białynicki–Birula-type decomposition of $\mathcal{M}_{K,N}$ , where the strata are labeled by isomorphism classes of the underlying filtered vector bundles.

In this paper we consider the following problem: let Xk, be a Banach space with a normalised basis (e(k, j))j, whose biorthogonals are denoted by ${(e_{(k,j)}^*)_j}$ , for $k\in\N$ , let $Z=\ell^\infty(X_k:k\kin\N)$ be their l∞-sum, and let $T:Z\to Z$ be a bounded linear operator with a large diagonal, i.e.,

$$\begin{align*}\inf_{k,j} \big|e^*_{(k,j)}(T(e_{(k,j)})\big|>0.\end{align*}$$

For a finite dimensional algebra A, the bounded homotopy category of projective A-modules and the bounded derived category of A-modules are dual to each other via certain categories of locally-finite cohomological functors. We prove that the duality gives rise to a 2-categorical duality between certain strict 2-categories involving bounded homotopy categories and bounded derived categories, respectively. We apply the 2-categorical duality to the study of triangle autoequivalence groups.