This National Science Foundation award provides support for the CBMS Conference: L-functions and Multiplicative Number Theory, to be held at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS on May 20-24, 2019. The conference will feature a series of ten lectures by Professor Kannan Soundararajan from Stanford University who is well known for his prolific and influential research in this area, and also for his skill as a lecturer and expositor. Professor Soundararajan's lectures will culminate in an expository monograph that will be a valuable resource for current and future researchers. The conference will also feature six additional lectures intended to complement and enhance the main lecture series. Approximately thirty participants will be supported, many of whom will be graduate students. The organizers intend to bring together both beginning and more established researchers to stimulate advances and collaboration on this current research topic. The organizers will actively recruit female participants as well as participants from other groups that are underrepresented in the mathematical sciences. In accordance with the NSF-CBMS goals, the host institution is interested upgrading and improving its research efforts, and trying to build a strong research group in number theory.
Number theory is an old and very active branch of mathematics, and the theory of L-functions has played a central role in its modern development. The tools used to study L-functions draw from many fields including analysis, algebra, algebraic geometry, automorphic forms and representation theory, probability and random matrices, and even mathematical physics. The broad theme for the conference will be the value distribution of zeta and L-functions. The lecture series will touch upon several important questions including the maximal size of L-functions, asymptotics for moments of L-values, the distribution of zeros, and non-vanishing of L-functions at special points. Moreover, it will be shown how the techniques used in the study of moments have close counterparts in the understanding of other problems in multiplicative number theory. The lecture series and accompanying monograph will give a broad perspective of this sharply focused research area in a way that will help researchers of all levels understand the major ideas and possible future directions for the field. Information regarding the conference can be found at https://math.olemiss.edu/cbms2019/.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
