On toric varieties and modular forms

These are the notes from a survey talk given at Arbeitstagung 2001 covering the author's work with Lev Borisov and Sorin Popescu on toric varieties, modular forms, and equations of modular curves

Robert MacPherson and arithmetic groups

We survey contributions of Robert MacPherson to the theory of arithmetic groups. There are two main areas we discuss: (i) explicit reduction theory for Siegel modular threefolds, and (ii) constructions of compactifications of locally symmetric spaces. The former is joint work with Mark McConnell, the latter with Lizhen Ji.Comment: Dedicated to Robert MacPherson on the occasion of his 60th birthda

Perfect forms over totally real number fields

A rational positive-definite quadratic form is perfect if it can be reconstructed from the knowledge of its minimal nonzero value m and the finite set of integral vectors v such that f(v) = m. This concept was introduced by Voronoi and later generalized by Koecher to arbitrary number fields. One knows that up to a natural "change of variables'' equivalence, there are only finitely many perfect forms, and given an initial perfect form one knows how to explicitly compute all perfect forms up to equivalence. In this paper we investigate perfect forms over totally real number fields. Our main result explains how to find an initial perfect form for any such field. We also compute the inequivalent binary perfect forms over real quadratic fields Q(\sqrt{d}) with d \leq 66.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

Defeating the Kalka--Teicher--Tsaban linear algebra attack on the Algebraic Eraser

The Algebraic Eraser (AE) is a public key protocol for sharing information over an insecure channel using commutative and noncommutative groups; a concrete realization is given by Colored Burau Key Agreement Protocol (CBKAP). In this paper, we describe how to choose data in CBKAP to thwart an attack by Kalka--Teicher--Tsaban

Weyl group multiple Dirichlet series of type A_2

A Weyl group multiple Dirichlet series is a Dirichlet series in several complex variables attached to a root system Phi. The number of variables equals the rank r of the root system, and the series satisfies a group of functional equations isomorphic to the Weyl group W of Phi. In this paper we construct a Weyl group multiple Dirichlet series over the rational function field using n-th order Gauss sums attached to the root system of type A_2. The basic technique is to construct a rational function in r variables invariant under a certain action of W, and use this to build a ``local factor'' of the global series