Questions tagged [motives]

for questions about motives in algebraic geometry, including constructions of categories of motives and motivic sheaves, and aspects of the standard conjectures.

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Grothendieck-Teichmüller conjecture

(1) In "Esquisse d'un programme", Grothendieck conjectures Grothendieck-Teichmüller conjecture: the morphism $$ G_{\mathbb{Q}} \longrightarrow Aut(\widehat{T}) $$ is an isomorphism. Here $...
AFK's user avatar
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106 votes
7 answers
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What is the field with one element?

I've heard of this many times, but I don't know anything about it. What I do know is that it is supposed to solve the problem of the fact that the final object in the category of schemes is one-...
Benjamin Antieau's user avatar
73 votes
4 answers
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What's the "Yoga of Motives"?

There are some things about geometry that show why a motivic viewpoint is deep and important. A good indication is that Grothendieck and others had to invent some important and new algebraico-...
Ilya Nikokoshev's user avatar
67 votes
1 answer
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What is the relationship between motivic cohomology and the theory of motives?

I will begin by giving a rough sketch of my understanding of motives. In many expositions about motives (for example, http://www.jmilne.org/math/xnotes/MOT102.pdf), the category of motives is defined ...
Makhalan Duff's user avatar
44 votes
2 answers
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What are the possible motivic Galois groups over $\mathbb Q$?

Let $E$ be a motive over $\mathbb Q$. (I should precise, that by a motive I mean here a pure motive over $\mathbb Q$, with coefficients in $\mathbb Q$, that I see here as a conjectural object which ...
Joël's user avatar
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44 votes
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Langlands in dimension 2: the Yoshida conjecture

Background: One prominent part of the Langlands program is the conjecture that all motives are automorphic. It is of interest to consider special cases that are more precise, if less sweeping. ...
Laie's user avatar
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41 votes
4 answers
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Understanding the definition of the Lefschetz (pure effective) motive

For all those who are unlikely to have answers to my questions, I provide some Background: In some sense, pure motives are generalisations of smooth projective varieties. Every Weil cohomology ...
Konrad Voelkel's user avatar
41 votes
1 answer
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Progress on the standard conjectures on algebraic cycles

What's the current state of these conjectures? Who is working on them? In "Standard conjectures on algebraic cycles" Grothendieck says: "They would form the basis of the so-called "theory of ...
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40 votes
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Are we better in computing integrals than mathematicians of 19th century?

When I started to learn mathematics, I was fascinating by legendary «Демидович»: problems in mathematical analysis. Fifteen years later, when I open chapters about integrals, I see a long list of ...
37 votes
8 answers
12k views

What is the proper initiation to the theory of motives for a new student of algebraic geometry?

A preliminary apology is in order: I realize that most of my contributions to this site are in the form of reference requests. I understand that this makes it seem as though I do nothing more than sit ...
lambdafunctor's user avatar
37 votes
1 answer
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Morava on Shafarevich conjecture

$\DeclareMathOperator\Q{\mathbf{Q}}$Jack Morava has some interesting ideas stemming from stable homotopy theory and geometric topology on the Shafarevich Conjecture. The Shafarevich Conjecture states: ...
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difference between equivalence relations on algebraic cycles

For the definitions of the equivalence relations on algebraic cycles see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adequate_equivalence_relation. I want to know how far away from each other the equivalence ...
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35 votes
4 answers
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What would a "moral" proof of the Weil Conjectures require?

At the very end of this 2006 interview (rm), Kontsevich says "...many great theorems are originally proven but I think the proofs are not, kind of, "morally right." There should be better proofs......
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The modularity theorem as a special case of the Bloch-Kato conjecture

In the homepage for the CRM's special semester this year, I found the interesting statement that the modularity theorem (formerly the Taniyama-Shimura-Weil conjecture) is a special case of the Bloch-...
Anton Hilado's user avatar
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Grothendieck's letter to Faltings: On the yoga of motives and the degeneration of Leray spectral sequence

In Grothendieck's letter to Faltings, he writes There exists at this time a kind of “yoga des motifs”, which is familiar to a handful of initiates, and in some situations provides a firm support for ...
Dan Petersen's user avatar
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Equivalent descriptions of Hodge conjecture?

I would like to know equivalent descriptions of the Hodge conjecture (with references). Dan Freed's Version: Consider a topological cycle (boundary less chains that are free to deform) on a ...
32 votes
4 answers
3k views

Spectrum of the Grothendieck ring of varieties

Here's a problem that may ultimately require just simple algebraic-geometry skills to be solved, or perhaps it's very deep and will never be solved at all. From the comments, some literature and my ...
Ilya Nikokoshev's user avatar
31 votes
2 answers
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On Grothendieck's idea on his Standard Conjecture B

Let me recall the Standard Conjecture B (see [1,2] below): The $\Lambda$-operation of Hodge theory is algebraic. It more or less says that the partial inverse to “cupping with the class of a ...
jmc's user avatar
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30 votes
3 answers
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t-structures and higher categories?

I'm curious to find out where the viewpoint of higher categories may be useful so here is a somewhat vague question (which may or may not have a reasonable answer). Given a triangulated category, one ...
algori's user avatar
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Derived Algebraic Geometry and Chow Rings/Chow Motives

I recently heard a talk about Chow motives and also read Milne's exposition on motives. If I understand it correctly, the naive definition of the Chow ring would be that it simply consists of all ...
Lennart Meier's user avatar
30 votes
1 answer
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Reasons for the use of Nisnevich topology in motivic homotopy theory

The objects of interest in motivic homotopy theory are "spaces"-which are simplicial sheaves of sets on the big Nisnevich site $Sm/k$ of smooth schemes of finite type over a field $k$. I understand ...
Carl's user avatar
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For which varieties is the natural map from the Chow ring to integral cohomology an isomorphism?

My apologies if this question is too naive. Let $X$ be a smooth projective complex variety. There is a natural map $A^{\bullet}(X) \to H^{2\bullet}(X)$ of graded rings from the Chow ring of $X$ to ...
Qiaochu Yuan's user avatar
29 votes
1 answer
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Is there a higher Grothendieck ring of varieties?

Fix a field $k$. The Grothendieck ring $K_0(\mathrm{Var}_k)$ of varieties over $k$ is defined as the quotient of the free abelian group on isomorphism classes of algebraic varieties by the scissor ...
Gring's user avatar
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3 answers
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$\zeta(n)$ as a mixed Tate motive

I am trying to understand why there exists, for each $n \geq 2$, a mixed Tate motive $M$ over $\mathbb{Q}$ such that $M \in Ext^1_{MT(\mathbb{Q})}(\mathbb{Q}(0), \mathbb{Q}(n))$ and $\zeta(n)$, ...
mtm93's user avatar
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27 votes
3 answers
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What do you lose when passing to the motive?

I contemplated about what information about a scheme we lose when passing to its motive. I came up with the following examples: The projective bundle of a vector bundle does only depend on the rank ...
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26 votes
4 answers
2k views

What is the status of the theory of motives?

It has been almost 60 years since Grothendieck conceived the conjectural theory of motives in order to grasp the common behavior of the most important (Weil) cohomology theories. But what is the ...
THC's user avatar
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26 votes
1 answer
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Voevodsky's counterexample to the existence of a motivic t-structure

I have been trying to unravel some of the known relationships between various ideas on mixed motives. I find the literature quite hard to follow -"from experts, for experts". Voevodsky in "...
plm's user avatar
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1 answer
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What's motivic about $\mathbb{A}^1$-homotopy theory? What's motivic about correspondences?

I come today to mathoverflow to showcase some genuine confusion about the motivic world. I want to ask some questions before actually starting to study the subject, to build some sense of direction. I ...
display llvll's user avatar
25 votes
2 answers
3k views

Most significant results in motivic integration theory?

I am thinking about reading a course on motivic integration. I have already read certain introductions to the subject; yet I am not sure that they mention all the significant parts of the theory. So, ...
Mikhail Bondarko's user avatar
24 votes
3 answers
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How are motives related to anabelian geometry and Galois-Teichmuller theory?

In Recoltes et Semailles, Grothendieck remarks that the theory of motives is related to anabelian geometry and Galois-Teichmuller theory. My understanding of these subjects is not very solid at this ...
Anton Hilado's user avatar
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24 votes
3 answers
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Are there "motivic" proofs of Weil conjectures in special cases?

This is a question meant as a first step to get into reading more on Weil conjectures and standard conjectures. It is known that the standard conjectures on vanishing of cycles would imply the Weil ...
Anweshi's user avatar
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23 votes
2 answers
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Why would the category of Motives be Tannakian?

After reading the answer to my previous question: What are the different theories that the motivic fundamental group attempts to unify? I decided to read up on Tannakian formalism. Given the ...
James D. Taylor's user avatar
22 votes
1 answer
1k views

Can we state the Riemann Hypothesis part of the Weil conjectures directly in terms of the count of points?

For algebraic curves we can state the Riemann hypothesis part of the Weil conjectures directly as a formula for the number of points on the curves, sidestepping the zeta function. Namely, given a ...
John Baez's user avatar
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21 votes
2 answers
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Kontsevich's conjectures on the Grothendieck-Teichmüller group?

Reading Kontsevich's "Operads and Motives in Deformation Quantization", I was wondering about the state of the many conjectures concerning the Grothendieck-Teichmüller group in chapter 4. (Also, where ...
Thomas Riepe's user avatar
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21 votes
1 answer
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When simple cohomological computations predict ingenious algebro-geometric constructions?

Classical algebraic geometry is full of ingenious constructions and miraculous coincidences: 27 lines on a cubic surface are related to Weyl lattice of type $E_6,$ lines on an intersection of four-...
21 votes
1 answer
2k views

Spectral sequences in $K$-theory

There is an algebraic analogue of the Atiyah-Hirzebruch spectral sequence from singular cohomology to topological $K$-theory of a topological space. For a field $k$, let $X$ be smooth variety $X$ ...
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21 votes
1 answer
737 views

What should motives for $L(E,n)$ look like?

Goncharov and Manin showed in this paper that the zeta values $\zeta(n)$ can be realized as periods of framed mixed Tate motives constructed from moduli spaces $\overline{\mathcal{M}}_{0,n+3}$ of ...
Matthias Wendt's user avatar
20 votes
3 answers
2k views

Voevodsky's Triangulated Categories of Motives and their Relationships

As we know, Voevodsky constructed several candidates for the triangulated category of motives using different constructions and topologies (h, qfh, etale, and Nisnevich). I would like to know what ...
user98070's user avatar
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3 answers
565 views

Examples when quantum $q$ equals to arithmetic $q$

First, as a disclaimer, I should say that this post is not about any specific propositions, but is more of some philosophical flavor. In the world of quantum mathematics, the letter $q$ is a standard ...
Estwald's user avatar
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20 votes
1 answer
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Why would one "attempt" to define points of a motive as $\operatorname{Ext}^1(\mathbb{Q}(0),M)$?

I'm a novice when it comes to motives. (I've read multiple introductory texts.) I'm attempting to read Galois Theory and Diophantine geometry by Minhyong Kim. In it, he says that "One might attempt, ...
Quinlan Aktaş's user avatar
20 votes
1 answer
891 views

Is there any publication of Bombieri about the standard conjectures on algebraic cycles?

In "Standard conjectures of algebraic cycles" Grothendieck says: "... These [Standard conjectures] are not really new, and they were worked out about three years ago independently by Bombieri and ...
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20 votes
1 answer
712 views

Why is the CM closure of $\mathbb{Q}$ the "ultimate" coefficient field for motives?

In a rough way, a category of motives over a field $k$ with coefficients in a field $K$ gives a universal cohomology theory with coefficients in $K$ for algebraic varieties defined over $k$. I had the ...
user25309's user avatar
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20 votes
1 answer
998 views

Status of conjectures in Serre's 1969 expose on Galois representations on l-adic cohomology

In [S]: Serre, Jean-Pierre. Facteurs locaux des fonctions zeta des varietes algebriques (definitions et conjectures), Seminaire Delange-Pisot-Poitou, 1969-70 Serre presents nine conjectures *C*$_1$...
Kestutis Cesnavicius's user avatar
19 votes
2 answers
2k views

Unipotency in realisations of the motivic fundamental group

Deligne, in his 1987 paper on the fundamental group of $\mathbb{P}^1 \setminus \{0,1,\infty\}$ (in "Galois Groups over $\mathbb{Q}$"), defines a system of realisations for a motivic fundamental group. ...
Frank's user avatar
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19 votes
2 answers
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What are the different theories that the motivic fundamental group attempts to unify?

I must preface by confessing complete ignorance in the subject. I've read introductory texts about the theory of motives, but I am certainly no expert. In http://www.math.ias.edu/files/deligne/...
James D. Taylor's user avatar
19 votes
2 answers
2k views

What is the relationship between these two notions of "period"?

The motivation for this question is to understand a recent theorem of Francis Brown which implies that all periods of mixed Tate motives over $\mathbb{Z}$ lie in $\mathcal{Z}[\frac{1}{2\pi i}]$, where ...
Julian Rosen's user avatar
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19 votes
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Analogue of Tate or Hodge conjecture for varieties over $\mathbb Q_p$

I've been learning about p-adic Hodge theory recently (I'm a beginner), and I've been wondering about the following question the past couple of weeks. Sorry for the long setup, it's mainly background;...
Peter's user avatar
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19 votes
1 answer
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Connes-Kreimer Hopf algebra and cosmic Galois group

Hi, I'm interested in the relation between the two following constructions motivated by renormalization: Connes-Kreimer gives an interpretation of the renormalization procedure in the framework of ...
Adrien's user avatar
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19 votes
1 answer
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constants in Gamma factors in functional equation for zeta functions.

Usually the Riemann zeta function $\zeta(s)$ gets multiplied by a "gamma factor" to give a function $\xi(s)$ satisfying a functional equation $\xi(s)=\xi(1-s)$. If I changed this gamma factor by a non-...
Kevin Buzzard's user avatar
18 votes
4 answers
2k views

Why does one invert $G_m$ in the construction of the motivic stable homotopy category?

Morel and Voevodsky construct the motivic stable homotopy category, a category through which all cohomology theories factor and where they are representable, by starting with a category of schemes, ...
Peter Arndt's user avatar

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