AbstractWe briefly review the origin in physics of attractor points on the moduli space of Calabi-Yau threefolds. We turn to their mathematical interpretation as special cases of Hodge loci. This leads to fascinating conjectures on the modularity of the Calabi-Yau threefolds at these points in terms of their periods and L-functions. For hypergeometric one-parameter families of Calabi-Yau threef...
Abstract:The topological group of homeomorphisms of d-dimensional Euclidean space is a basic object in geometric topology, closely related to understanding the difference between diffeomorphisms and homeomorphisms of all d-dimensional manifolds (except when d=4). I will explain some methods that have been used for studying the algebraic topology of this group, and report on a recently obtained...