Number Theory Seminar

David ZywinaCornell University
Elliptic curves and the Inverse Galois Problem

Monday, February 3, 2014 - 4:00pm
Malott 230

By studying the Galois action on etale cohomology groups arising from families of elliptic curves, we will prove several new cases of the regular Inverse Galois Problem. In particular, we will explain why each of the simple groups $\mathrm{PSp}_4(\mathbf{F}_p)$ occur as the Galois group of a regular extension of the function field $\mathbf{Q}(t)$. The key ingredients will be a big monodromy result along with some known cases of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture.