Number Theory Seminar
Nathan Jones
UIC
Cohen-Lenstra heuristics
Abstract: If the class number of an imaginary quadratic field behaved like a random positive integer, then the asymptotic proportion of class numbers which
are divisible by 3 would be 1/3, or about 33.3%. However, this proportion is observed to be around 43%. In this talk, I will survey heuristic
reasoning due to Cohen-Lenstra from the 1980s which explains this phenomenon and makes various other precise statistical predictions about
class groups.
Tuesday February 17, 2015 at 11:00 AM in SEO 427