June 2019
This paper was written for a project supervised by Scott Morrison, in which we attempted to formalise the basic definitions of combinatorial games using the interactive theorem proving language Lean. While this theory is mostly elementary, it interacted in surprising ways with Lean’s inductive type system. Combinatorial game theory was later incorporated into mathlib, in part based on the work done in this project.
June 2020
We give an introduction to tropical algebraic geometry, motivated by many examples. We build towards the statement of the structure theorem for tropical algebraic varieties. This exposition was written for a course run by Martin Helmer at the ANU.
November 2020
This essay gives a brief introduction to the theory of representations on Banach spaces. It was written for a functional analysis course taught by Pierre Portal at the ANU.
June 2021
We present Montesinos and Neuwirth’s proof that 2-fold cyclic branched covers of S3 are precisely the (closed, orientable) 3-manifolds which can be obtained via surgery on a strongly-invertible link in S3. The proof uses rational tangle replacement, of which we give a short exposition. This paper was written for a course on low-dimensional topology run by Joan Licata at the ANU.
June 2021
We state and prove a version of the Riemann-Roch theorem over finite fields, including an interpretation of Serre duality in this context. This essay was written for a course on Riemann surfaces run by Ian Le at the ANU.
October 2021
My Honours thesis, supervised by Asilata Bapat. We study the bounded derived category of representations for an acyclic quiver, occupied chiefly by derived reflection functors.
June 2019, ANU, Mathematical Sciences Institute
A presentation summarising my project formalising combinatorial game theory in Lean. Here are the slides as a PDF.
June 2021, ANU, Mathematical Sciences Institute
A short talk introducing some quiver theory. I classify simple representations of acyclic quivers, and discuss Gabriel’s theorem. The video is available on Youtube, and here are the slides as a PDF.
November 2021, ANU, Mathematical Sciences Institute
A 15-minute talk giving an introduction to derived reflection functors. We start with basic definitions, introduce the bounded derived category of quiver representations, and explain how derived reflection functors are induced from reflection functors. The upshot is that for an acyclic graph, any choice of edge orientations gives rise to the same derived category, with explicit isomorphisms via derived reflections. The video is available on Youtube, and here are the slides as a PDF.
October 2022, MIT Kan Seminar
A 50-minute talk given for the MIT Kan seminar in Fall 2022. I read and presented Milnor’s “On the Cobordism Ring $\Omega$* and a Complex Analogue,” giving a modern treatment of the material in terms of spectra.
November 2022, MIT Kan Seminar
A 50-minute talk given for the MIT Kan seminar in Fall 2022. I gave a proof of the Thom-Pontryagin theorem, which states that as graded rings, the cobordism ring with a given universal tangential structure is isomorphic to the stable homotopy groups of the corresponding Thom spectrum. I focused first on the case of framed cobordism giving rise to the stable homotopy groups of spheres, and then explained how to generalise.
March 2023, MIT Juvitop Seminar
A 1-hour talk given for Juvitop in Spring 2023, which was about Floer Homotopy Theory. After the work of Abouzaid-Blumberg, I defined (framed) flow categories and flow bimodules, and constructed the infinity category of flow categories. I gave the proof that in the framed case, this is a stable infinity category and in fact equivalent to the category of finite spectra. Auxiliary material included some background on stability and how to recognise the category of finite spectra.
May 2023, Harvard Zygotop Seminar
A 2.5-hour expository talk given for zygotop in Spring 2023, a learning seminar for young graduate students interested in homotopy theory and related areas. I gave an overview of the Land-Tamme paper “On the \(K\)-theory of pushouts” shortly after it was uploaded to the arXiv. I stated and proved their main results, namely that we can measure the failure of excision for localising invariants (think \(K\)-theory) via the \(\odot\)-construction, and that this \(\odot\)-construction can be expressed as a pushout in \(\text{Alg}(k)\) in good circumstances. This makes it computable in many situations of interest. The talk finished with a tour of some applications.
October 2023, Harvard Zygotop Seminar
A 2-hour expository talk given for zygotop in Fall 2023, a learning seminar for young graduate students interested in homotopy theory and related areas. I gave an introduction to algebraic \(K\)-theory, starting from the classical perspective and then spending some time on the universal constructions of connective and non-connective \(K\)-theory (in terms of the universal additive and localising invariant, respectively). I also discussed Waldhausen’s \(wS_\bullet\) construction, and we concluded with a summary of Quillen’s computation of the \(K\)-theory of finite fields via the \(BGL(R)^+\)-construction. Notes are available.
November 2023, Harvard Trivial Notions Seminar
Taking the fundamental group gives an equivalence of categories between pointed spaces whose homotopy groups \(\pi_n\) for \(n \neq 1\) all vanish, and groups. From this perspective, group theory can be viewed as the truncation of a more general theory of pointed connected spaces. Then the natural question is: to what extent can we do group theory in this new homotopical setting (where we don’t require the higher homotopy groups to vanish)? In this talk, we translate the Sylow theorems for finite groups to the context of finite $\infty$-groups, and use this to get a group-theoretic classification of finite nilpotent spaces, by analogy to the classification of finite nilpotent groups. We also discuss a failure of normality for $\infty$-groups, as something of a cautionary tale. Notes are available, and the primary reference is “Sylow theorems for \(\infty\)-groups” by Prasma and Schlank.
February 2024, Harvard Thursday Seminar
An expository talk given for the Harvard Thursday Seminar in Spring 2024, which was on the topic of the recent paper “K-theoretic counterexamples to Ravenel’s telescope conjecture” by Burklund, Hahn, Levy, and Schlank. In this talk, I stated and gave proofs of the key theorems from “The algebraic \(K\)-theory of the \(K(1)\)-local sphere via \(TC\)” by Levy, including computation of the \(K\)-theory of the \(K(1)\)-local sphere in terms of \(TC\) of the Adams summand, and an analogue to the Dundas-Goodwillie-McCarthy theorem for certain \((-1)\)-connective rings. I also explained the Land-Tamme $\odot$ construction, which, given the input of a pullback square of \(\mathbb{E}_1\)-rings, allows comparison with a closely related commuting square which becomes a pullback under \(K\)-theory or another localizing invariant. The relevance of this talk to the seminar is that the counterexample to the telescope conjecture at height 2 is \(K(L_{K(1)}\mathbb{S})\). Notes are available.
April 2024, Harvard Zygotop Seminar
An expository talk given for zygotop in Spring 2024, a learning seminar for young graduate students interested in homotopy theory and related areas. I gave an introduction to the Hopf invariant one problem and its solution, including the classical results relating real division algebra structures on \(\mathbb{R}^n\), parallelizability of \(S^{n-1}\), H-space structures on \(S^{n-1}\), and elements of Hopf invariant one in \(\pi_{2n-1}(S^n)\). I defined the Hopf invariant in terms of complex topological K-theory, and gave Adams-Atiyah’s proof (using the splitting principle and Adams operations on topological K-theory) that elements of Hopf invariant \(\pm 1\) exist only for \(n = 1, 2, 4, 8\).
April 2024, MIT Babytop Seminar
In Spring 2024, the babytop seminar was about the two (p-adic) towers and the paper “On the rationalization of the K(n)-local sphere” by Barthel, Schlank, Stapleton, and Weinstein. I gave the last talk of the semester, explaining how to finish the proof of Theorem B by computing the proétale cohomology of the Drinfeld symmetric space and the rigid analytic open unit disc. My talk covered Sections 6 and 3.9 of the paper.
August 2024, MIT Talbot Workshop
This talk was given as an attendee at the 2024 Talbot workshop, which was about THH of ring spectra. I gave a proof of the Segal conjecture for \(BP\langle n \rangle\) by first proving it for graded polynomial \(\mathbb{E}_2\)-\(\mathbb{F}_p\)-algebras, and then using (the décalage of) the Adams filtration on \(BP\langle n \rangle\) to reduce to the \(\mathbb{F}_p\)-algebra case. The talk was based on Section 4 of “Redshift and multiplication for truncated Brown-Peterson spectra” by Jeremy Hahn and Dylan Wilson. Notes from all the talks given at Talbot 2024 will eventually be available on the workshop website.
September 2024, Harvard Babytop Seminar
In Fall 2024, the babytop seminar was on Hill-Hopkins-Ravenel’s resolution of the Kervaire invariant one problem. In this talk, I gave a brief introduction to equivariant homotopy theory. In the non-equivariant setting, homotopy theory is concerned with topological spaces up to weak equivalence. Before we can do equivariant homotopy theory, we need an equivariant notion of weak equivalence. Through a selection of examples, we try to motivate the relevant definitions. We then discuss Elmendorf’s Theorem and how it gives us a very nice, concrete model for the \(\infty\)-category of G-spaces as presheaves on the orbit category. We conclude by saying a few words about equivariance in families. This talk was based on Chapter 1 of Blumberg’s Burnside Category, and there are notes I prepared.