Unanswered Questions
49,207 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Does the Tate construction (defined with direct sums) have a derived interpretation?
Any abelian group M with an action of a finite group $G$ has a Tate cohomology object $\hat H(G;M)$ in the derived category of chain complexes. There are several ways to define this. One is as the ...
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Concordance and homology cobordism
If two knots $K_1$ and $K_2$ in $S^3$ are smoothly concordant, then for any rational number $r$, the $r$-surgeries $S^3_r(K_1)$ and $S^3_r(K_2)$ are homology cobordant. Is the converse true? What if $...
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Calabi-Yau cohomology?
My question here is going to be this -- but I'll give a bit of background to explain myself in a moment:
What has been done/what results are available on Calabi-Yau cohomology in degree $n \geq 3$ (...
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Status of the Euler characteristic in characteristic p
In the introduction to the Asterisque 82-83 volume on `Caractérisque d'Euler-Poincaré, Verdier writes:
Enfin signalons que la situation en caractéristique positive est loin
d'être aussi ...
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1k
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$\infty$-topos and localic $\infty$-groupoids?
It's known that every classical (Grothendieck) topos is equivalent to the topos of sheaves on a localic groupoid (a groupoid in the category of locales).
For the record, this is proved by, starting ...
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Milnor's cartography problem
Let $\Omega$ be a round disc of radius $\alpha<\frac{\pi}{2}$ on the unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^2$.
It is easy to construct a $(1,\tfrac{\alpha}{\sin\alpha})$-bi-Lipschitz map from $\Omega$ to the ...
- 45k
24
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814
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Revising the proof of CFSG
This is an oft-quoted excerpt from John Thompson's article "Finite Non-Solvable Groups":
“... the classification of finite simple groups is an exercise in taxonomy. This is
obvious to the ...
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1k
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What is the status of the cobordism hypothesis?
Let $\mathscr{C}$ be a symmetric monoidal (weak) $n$-category. A framed extended TQFT of dimension $n$ with values in $\mathscr{C}$ is a symmetric monoidal functor from the framed bordism $n$-category ...
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Philosophy behind Zhang's 2022 preprint on the Landau–Siegel zero
Now that a week has passed since Zhang posted his preprint Discrete mean estimates and the Landau–Siegel zero on the arXiv, I'm wondering if someone can give a high-level overview of his strategy. In ...
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The $(\infty, 1)$-category of all topological spaces, including the bad ones
[Edit: Corrected some false claims and modified questions accordingly.]
Let $\mathcal{S}$ be the cocomplete $(\infty, 1)$-category generated by a point.
This is conventionally known as the $(\infty, 1)...
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0's in 815915283247897734345611269596115894272000000000
Is 40 the largest number for which all the 0 digits in the decimal form of $n!$ come at the end?
Motivation: My son considered learning all digits of 40! for my birthday. I told him that the best way ...
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730
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What is the status of a result of Kontsevich and Rosenberg?
In their influential paper Noncommutative Smooth Spaces (https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9812158), Kontsevich and Rosenberg define the notion of a noncommutative projective space. In Section 3.3 they ...
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What's the smallest $\lambda$-calculus term not known to have a normal form?
For Turing Machines, the question of halting behavior of small TMs has been well studied in the context of the Busy Beaver function, which maps n to the longest output or running time of any halting n ...
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Have any of Maryam Mirzakhani's doodles been preserved?
I edit a magazine for High School students, and would very much like to get hold of a large image of one of the large sheets of paper with Maryam Mirzakhani's mathematical drawings on for the cover of ...
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What's the point of cubical type theory?
I have been following through the development of homotopy type theory since 2013 because I was really interested in the foundation of mathematics. The novel idea of combining programming with homotopy ...
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How much of the plane is 4-colorable?
In 1981, Falconer proved that the measurable chromatic number of the plane is at least 5. That is, there are no measurable sets $A_1,A_2,A_3,A_4\subseteq\mathbb{R}^2$, each avoiding unit distances, ...
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Exotic 4-spheres and the Tate-Shafarevich Group
The title is a talk given by Sir M. Atiyah in a conference with the following abstract:
I will explain a deep analogy between 4-dimensional smooth geometry (Donaldson theory)...
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Is A276175 integer-only?
The terms of the sequence A276123, defined by $a_0=a_1=a_2=1$ and $$a_n=\dfrac{(a_{n-1}+1)(a_{n-2}+1)}{a_{n-3}}\;,$$ are all integers (it's easy to prove that for all $n\geq2$, $a_n=\frac{9-3(-1)^n}{2}...
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Vector bundle $L$ admits connection if and only if degree of every direct summand of $L$ divisible by $\text{char}\,k$, intuition
Consider the following theorem of Atiyah.
Let $X$ be a connected smooth projective curve over an algebraically closed field $k$. Then a vector bundle $L$ on $X$ admits a connection if and only if the ...
user61522
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Nekrasov-Okounkov hook length formula
I am now reading the paper An explicit expansion formula for the powers of the Euler Product in terms of partition hook lengths by Guo-Niu Han. The author rediscovered what he calls the Nekrasov-...
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conjectures regarding a new Renyi information quantity
In a recent paper http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.6102, we defined a quantity that we called the "Renyi conditional mutual information" and investigated several of its properties. We have some open ...
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918
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The topologies for which a presheaf is a sheaf?
Given a set $S$, let $Top(S)$ denote the partially ordered set (poset) of topologies on $S$, ordered by fineness, so the discrete topology, $Disc(S)$, is maximal.
Suppose that $Q$ is a presheaf on $...
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p-Adic String Theory and the String-orientation of Topological Modular Forms (tmf)
I am going to ask a question, at the end below, on whether anyone has tried to make more explicit what should be, it seems to me, a close relation between p-adic string theory and the refinement of ...
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488
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Is the Poset of Graphs Automorphism-free?
For $n\geq 5$, let $\mathcal {P}_n$ be the set of all isomorphism classes of graphs with n vertices. Give this set the poset structure given by $G \le H$ if and only if $G$ is a subgraph of $H$.
Is ...
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751
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Are amenable groups topologizable?
I've learned about the notion of topologizability from "On topologizable and non-topologizable groups" by Klyachko, Olshanskii and Osin (http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.7895) - a discrete group $G$ is ...
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Monoid structure of oriented manifolds with connect sum
Take the class of all compact, connected, boundaryless, smooth oriented $n$-dimensional manifolds, each taken up to orientation-preserving diffeomorphism. This is a commutative monoid with operation ...
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Example of a quasi-Bernoulli measure which is not Gibbs?
Let $X=\{0,1\}^{\mathbb{N}}$. For simplicity I consider measures on $X$ only.
A measure $\mu$ is quasi-Bernoulli if there is a constant $C\ge 1$ such that for any finite sequences $i,j$,
$$
C^{-1} \...
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Subfields of $\mathbb{C}$ isomorphic to $\mathbb{R}$ that have Baire property, without Choice
While sitting through my complex analysis class, beginning with a very low level introduction, the teacher mentioned the obvious subfield of $\mathbb{C}$ isomorphic to $\mathbb{R}$, and I then ...
user5810
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816
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Smooth proper schemes over Z with points everywhere locally
This is a variation on Poonen's question, taking Buzzard's fabulous example into account. It was earlier a part of this other question.
Question. Is there a smooth proper scheme $X\to\operatorname{...
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Which proofs of the fundamental theorem of algebra are "essentially the same" vs. "essentially different"?
The classic MO thread Ways to prove the fundamental theorem of algebra contains $60$ proofs of FTA, and I'm sure there are many more in the literature. It would be nice to have some way to organize ...
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700
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Do most manifolds have symmetries? or not?
Let us say that a (closed, connected) manifold has a symmetry if it admits a non-trivial action by a finite group. Note that I am not asking the action to be free. So for example rotating the 2-sphere ...
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Knots realized as algebraic curves
Two questions:
Q1. Have researchers worked out minimum-degree
real algebraic curves in $\mathbb{R}^3$ realizing specific knots?
Some work on the trefoil is reported in this MSE question.
&...
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CH and automorphisms of ultrapowers of $\mathbb{Z}$ and $\mathbb{R}$
Notation and motivation. Given an algebraic structure $\mathbb{M}$ of cardinality at most the continuum and with countably many operations, and a nonprincipal ultrafilter $\cal{U}$ on a countably ...
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Is this a model for $K$-theory of a triangulated category?
The recent question Complete the following sequence: point, triangle, octahedron, . . . in a dg-category reminded me of something I wanted to clarify long time ago; most likely this is now well known ...
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Topological loops vs. algebro-geometric suspension in Hochschild homology
Let $k$ be a base commutative ring, and let $A$ be a (unital but not necessarily commutative) $k$-algebra. The cone on $A$ is the ring $CA$ of infinite matrices $(a_{ij})_{i,j \geq 1}$ that are ...
- 6,069
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590
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What is the symmetric monoidal functor from Clifford algebras to invertible K-module spectra?
There ought to be a symmetric monoidal functor from the symmetric monoidal $2$-groupoid whose objects are Morita-invertible real superalgebras (precisely the Clifford algebras), morphisms are ...
- 118k
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Base change for $\sqrt{2}.$
This is a direct follow-up to Conjecture on irrational algebraic numbers.
Take the decimal expansion for $\sqrt{2},$ but now think of it as the base $11$ expansion of some number $\theta_{11}.$ Is ...
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939
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A question about small sets of reals
In ZFC, does there exist an uncountable set of reals $A$ such that for every closed measure zero set of reals $B$, we have that $ A + B = \{a+b : a \in A, b \in B\} \neq \mathbb{R}$?
This question is ...
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Laplace Transform in the context of Gelfand/Pontryagin
Questions:
Is there a class of objects (presumably related to locally compact abelian groups) for which the quasi-characters canonically generalize the Laplace transform?
If not, is there a ...
- 1,124
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Eichler-Shimura over Totally Real Fields
By Eichler-Shimura over totally real fields I mean the following conjecture.
Conjecture. Let $K$ be a totally real field. Let $f$ be a Hilbert eigenform with rational eigenvalues, of parallel weight $...
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An $n \times n$ matrix $A$ is similar to its transpose $A^{\top}$: elementary proof?
A famous result in linear algebra is the following.
An $n \times n$ matrix $A$ over a field $\mathbb{F}$ is similar to its transpose $A^T$.
I know one proof using the Smith Normal Form (SNF). ...
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Is there a functor of points approach to algebraic cycles and intersection theory?
Motivation
Most of the algebraic geometry I have done so far was concerned with group schemes (e.g., abelian schemes, tori, unipotent groups). In that part of the field the "functor of points POV" is ...
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Boundaries of noncompact contractible manifolds
It is known that a manifold $B$ bounds a compact contractible topological manifold if and only if $B$ is a homology sphere. The "only if" direction follows by excising a small ball in the interior of ...
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Are there lots of integer homology three-spheres?
The problem of counting combinatorial three-spheres with $N$ simplices has implications for some partition functions in physics (see a paper by Benedetti and Ziegler for more background and references)...
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Is analytic capacity inner regular?
For a compact set $K$ in the complex plane, define the analytic capacity of $K$ by
$$\gamma(K) := \sup |f'(\infty)|$$
where the supremum is taken over all functions $f$ holomorphic and bounded by $1$ ...
- 2,154
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Characteristic classes for $E_8$ bundles
$\DeclareMathOperator\B{B}\DeclareMathOperator\SU{SU}$Given a principal $E_8$ bundle $P\rightarrow X$ one can take the
adjoint representation $\rho :E_8\rightarrow \SU(\mathbb C^{248})$
and form the ...
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Do all possible trees arise as orbit trees of some permutation groups?
I.Motivation from descriptive set theory
(Contains some quotes from Maciej Malicki's paper.)
The classical theorem of Birkhoff-Kakutani implies that every metrizable topological group G admits a ...
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Riemannian manifolds etc. as locally ringed spaces?
There are, among others, three general ways of equipping a "space" (which for the purposes of this question could be a topological space or a differentiable manifold, according to the case) with ...
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566
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When does a representation admit a spin structure?
Let $G$ be a finite group, and let $V$ be an $n$-dimensional real representation of $G$. Think of $V$ as given by a homomorphism
$$ \rho_V\colon G\to O(n).$$
Write $\chi_V$ for the character of $V$.
...
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Most "natural" proof of the existence of Hilbert class fields
Assume that you have proved the two inequalities of class field theory, and that you want to show that the Hilbert class field, i.e., the maximal unramified abelian extension, of a number field $K$ ...
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