Angus Macintyre, Edinburgh

Weil cohomologies, compactness, and uniformities
Rutgers Logic Seminar

Abstract

The notion of Weil Cohomology Theory in algebraic geometry abstracts the principal properties needed to establish rationality of Weil zeta functions,and,if augmented by Grothendieck's Standard Conjectures,leads to an essentially formal proof of the Weil Conjectures.To construct even one such theory was a major achievement.A rather careful modeltheoretic analysis will show that the notions is what modeltheorists call first order(it certainly does not look that way at first glance),and this opens the possibility of averaging cohomology theories to construct new ones.This in turns reveals that the Standard Conjectures,liberally construed,encode uniformities concerning notions of intersection theory,not explicitly spelled out in the literature.This in turn connects to older issues of bounds in polynomial ideals,sometimes conveniently proved via model theory.A systematic study of the modeltheoretic aspects is connected with issues of effective(or uniform) computation fo zeta functions of varieties.In addition it leads to new issues in difference algebra,concerning the action of a generic difference operator on cohomology.

I will give a leisurely introduction to these ideas.


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