Number Theory Seminar
Joseph Gunther
CUNY
Random Hypersurfaces and Embedding Curves in Surfaces
Abstract: We'll present two new applications of Poonen's closed-point sieve over finite fields. The first is that the
obvious local obstruction to embedding a curve in a smooth surface is the only global obstruction, over
any perfect field. The second is a proof of a conjecture of Vakil and Wood, on the probability that a random
hypersurface slice of a smooth variety will have a given number of singularities.
Wednesday April 20, 2016 at 1:00 PM in SEO 1227