Heuristics for p-class towers of number fields

Seminar: 
Number Theory
Event time: 
Tuesday, February 11, 2014 - 11:30am to Monday, February 10, 2014 - 7:00pm
Location: 
LOM 205
Speaker: 
Farshid Hajir
Speaker affiliation: 
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Event description: 

Let p be an odd prime. Some 30 years ago, Cohen and Lenstra introduced a heuristic which explains the frequency with which a given p-group occurs as the p-class group of imaginary quadratic fields. Replacing the p-class group with the pro-p fundamental group of such a field, viz. the Galois group of its maximal unramified p-extension, we develop a non-abelian heuristic of Cohen-Lenstra type, and provide some evidence for it. This is joint work with Nigel Boston and Michael Bush.