Snakes, spines, threads and all that

Conway introduced his Big Picture to make it easier to understand and name the groups appearing in Monstrous Moonshine.

For $M \in \mathbb{Q}_+$ and $0 \leq \frac{g}{h} < 1$, $M,\frac{g}{h}$ denotes (the projective equivalence class of) the lattice $\mathbb{Z} (M \vec{e}_1 + \frac{g}{h} \vec{e}_2) \oplus \mathbb{Z} \vec{e}_2$ which we also like to represent by the $2 \times 2$ matrix $\alpha_{M,\frac{g}{h}} = \begin{bmatrix} M & \frac{g}{h} \\ 0 & 1 \end{bmatrix}$ A subgroup $G$ of $GL_2(\mathbb{Q})$ is said to fix $M,\frac{g}{h}$ if
$\alpha_{M,\frac{g}{h}}.G.\alpha_{M,\frac{g}{h}}^{-1} \subset SL_2(\mathbb{Z})$
The full group of all elements fixing $M,\frac{g}{h}$ is the conjugate
$\alpha_{M,\frac{g}{h}}^{-1}.SL_2(\mathbb{Z}).\alpha_{M,\frac{g}{h}}$
For a number lattice $N=N,0$ the elements of this group are all of the form
$\begin{bmatrix} a & \frac{b}{N} \\ cN & d \end{bmatrix} \qquad \text{with} \qquad \begin{bmatrix} a & b \\ c & d \end{bmatrix} \in SL_2(\mathbb{Z})$
and the intersection with $SL_2(\mathbb{Z})$ (which is the group of all elements fixing the lattice $1=1,0$) is the congruence subgroup
$\Gamma_0(N) = \{ \begin{bmatrix} a & b \\ cN & d \end{bmatrix}~|~ad-Nbc = 1 \}$
Conway argues that this is the real way to think of $\Gamma_0(N)$, as the joint stabilizer of the two lattices $N$ and $1$!

The defining definition of 24 tells us that $\Gamma_0(N)$ fixes more lattices. In fact, it fixes exactly the latices $M \frac{g}{h}$ such that
$1~|~M~|~\frac{N}{h^2} \quad \text{with} \quad h^2~|~N \quad \text{and} \quad h~|~24$
Conway calls the sub-graph of the Big Picture on these lattices the snake of $(N|1)$.

Here’s the $(60|1)$-snake (note that $60=2^2.3.5$ so $h=1$ or $h=2$ and edges corresponding to the prime $2$ are coloured red, those for $3$ green and for $5$ blue).

$\xymatrix{& & & 15 \frac{1}{2} \ar@[red]@{-}[dd] & & \\ & & 5 \frac{1}{2} \ar@[red]@{-}[dd] & & & \\ & 15 \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] & & 30 \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] & & 60 \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] \\ 5 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] & & 10 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] & & 20 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] & \\ & 3 \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] & & 6 \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] \ar@[red]@{-}[dd] & & 12 \\ 1 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] & & 2 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] \ar@[red]@{-}[dd] & & 4 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] & \\ & & & 3\frac{1}{2} & & \\ & & 1 \frac{1}{2} & & &}$

The sub-graph of lattices fixed by $\Gamma_0(N)$ for $h=1$, that is all number-lattices $M=M,0$ for $M$ a divisor of $N$ is called the thread of $(N|1)$. Here’s the $(60|1)$-thread

$\xymatrix{ & 15 \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] & & 30 \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] & & 60 \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] \\ 5 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] & & 10 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] & & 20 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] & \\ & 3 \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] & & 6 \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] & & 12 \\ 1 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] & & 2 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] & & 4 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] & }$

If $N$ factors as $N = p_1^{e_1} p_2^{e_2} \dots p_k^{e_k}$ then the $(N|1)$-thread is the product of the $(p_i^{e_i}|1)$-threads and has a symmetry group of order $2^k$.

It is generated by $k$ involutions, each one the reflexion in one $(p_i^{e_i}|1)$-thread and the identity on the other $(p_j^{e_j}|1)$-threads.
In the $(60|1)$-thread these are the reflexions in the three mirrors of the figure.

So, there is one involution for every divisor $e$ of $N$ such that $(e,\frac{N}{e})=1$. For such an $e$ there are matrices, with $a,b,c,d \in \mathbb{Z}$, of the form
$W_e = \begin{bmatrix} ae & b \\ cN & de \end{bmatrix} \quad \text{with} \quad ade^2-bcN=e$
Think of Bezout and use that $(e,\frac{N}{e})=1$.

Such $W_e$ normalizes $\Gamma_0(N)$, that is, for any $A \in \Gamma_0(N)$ we have that $W_e.A.W_e^{-1} \in \Gamma_0(N)$. Also, the determinant of $W_e^e$ is equal to $e^2$ so we can write $W_e^2 = e A$ for some $A \in \Gamma_0(N)$.

That is, the transformation $W_e$ (left-multiplication) sends any lattice in the thread or snake of $(N|1)$ to another such lattice (up to projective equivalence) and if we apply $W_e^2$ if fixes each such lattice (again, up to projective equivalence), so it is the desired reflexion corresponding with $e$.

Consider the subgroup of $GL_2(\mathbb{Q})$ generated by $\Gamma_0(N)$ and some of these matrices $W_e,W_f,\dots$ and denote by $\Gamma_0(N)+e,f,\dots$ the quotient modulo positive scalar matrices, then
$\Gamma_0(N) \qquad \text{is a normal subgroup of} \qquad \Gamma_0(N)+e,f,\dots$
with quotient isomorphic to some $(\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z})^l$ isomorphic to the subgroup generated by the involutions corresponding to $e,f,\dots$.

More generally, consider the $(n|h)$-thread for number lattices $n=n,0$ and $h=h,0$ such that $h | n$ as the sub-graph on all number lattices $l=l,0$ such that $h | l | n$. If we denote with $\Gamma_0(n|h)$ the point-wise stabilizer of $n$ and $h$, then we have that
$\Gamma(n|h) = \begin{bmatrix} h & 0 \\ 0 & 1 \end{bmatrix}^{-1}.\Gamma_0(\frac{n}{h}).\begin{bmatrix} h & 0 \\ 0 & 1 \end{bmatrix}$
and we can then denote with
$\Gamma_0(n|h)+e,f,\dots$
the conjugate of the corresponding group $\Gamma_0(\frac{n}{h})+e,f,\dots$.

If $h$ is the largest divisor of $24$ such that $h^2$ divides $N$, then Conway calls the spine of the $(N|1)$-snake the subgraph on all lattices of the snake whose distance from its periphery is exactly $log(h)$.

For $N=60$, $h=2$ and so the spine of the $(60|1)$-snake is the central piece connected with double black edges

$\xymatrix{& & & 15 \frac{1}{2} \ar@[red]@{-}[dd] & & \\ & & 5 \frac{1}{2} \ar@[red]@{-}[dd] & & & \\ & 15 \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] & & 30 \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] \ar@[black]@{=}[dd] & & 60 \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] \\ 5 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] & & 10 \ar@[black]@{=}[ru] \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] \ar@[black]@{=}[dd] & & 20 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] \ar@[blue]@{-}[dd] & \\ & 3 \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] & & 6 \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] \ar@[red]@{-}[dd] & & 12 \\ 1 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] & & 2 \ar@[black]@{=}[ru] \ar@[red]@{-}[rr] \ar@[red]@{-}[dd] & & 4 \ar@[green]@{-}[ru] & \\ & & & 3\frac{1}{2} & & \\ & & 1 \frac{1}{2} & & &}$

which is the $(30|2)$-thread.

The upshot of all this is to have a visual proof of the Atkin-Lehner theorem which says that the full normalizer of $\Gamma_0(N)$ is the group $\Gamma_0(\frac{N}{h}|h)+$ (that is, adding all involutions) where $h$ is the largest divisor of $24$ for which $h^2|N$.

Any element of this normalizer must take every lattice in the $(N|1)$-snake fixed by $\Gamma_0(N)$ to another such lattice. Thus it follows that it must take the snake to itself.
Conversely, an element that takes the snake to itself must conjugate into itself the group of all matrices that fix every point of the snake, that is to say, must normalize $\Gamma_0(N)$.

But the elements that take the snake to itself are precisely those that take the spine to itself, and since this spine is just the $(\frac{N}{h}|h)$-thread, this group is just $\Gamma_0(\frac{N}{h}|h)+$.

Reference: J.H. Conway, “Understanding groups like $\Gamma_0(N)$”, in “Groups, Difference Sets, and the Monster”, Walter de Gruyter-Berlin-New York, 1996

Arithmetic topology in Quanta

Consider subscribing to the feed of the mathematics section of Quantamagazine.

The articles there are invariably of high quality and quite informative.

Their latest is Secret Link Uncovered Between Pure Math and Physics by Kevin Hartnett.

It features the work by number-theorist Minhyong Kim of Oxford University.

In it, Minhyong Kim comes out of the closet, revealing that many of his results on rational points of algebraic curves were inspired by analogies he sees between number theory and physics.

So far he refrained from mentioning this inspiration in papers because “Number theorists are a pretty tough-minded group of people,” he said.

Yesterday, Peter Woit had a post on this on his blog ‘Not Even Wrong’, stuffed with interesting links to recent talks and papers by Minhyong Kim.

Minhyong Kim’s ideas grew out the topic of arithmetic topology, that is, the analogy between number rings and $3$-dimensional compact manifolds and between their prime ideals and embedded knots.

In this analogy, which is based on the similarity between finite connected covers of manifolds on the one hand and connected etale extensions of rings on the other, the prime spectrum of $\mathbb{Z}$ should correspond (due to Minkowski’s result on discriminants and Perelman’s proof of the Poincare-conjecture) to the $3$-sphere $S^3$.

And probably I’ll mention it later this month when I give a couple of talks at the $\mathbb{F}_1$-seminar in Ghent.

Mathematics in times of internet

A few weeks more of (heavy) teaching ahead, and then I finally hope to start on a project, slumbering for way too long: to write a book for a broader audience.

Prepping for this I try to read most of the popular math-books hitting the market.

The latest two explore how the internet changed the way we discuss, learn and do mathematics. Think Math-Blogs, MathOverflow and Polymath.

‘Gina says’, Adventures in the Blogosphere String War

The ‘string wars’ started with the publication of the books by Peter Woit:

Not even wrong: the failure of string theory and the search for unity in physical law

and Lee Smolin:

In the summer of 2006, Gil Kalai got himself an extra gmail acount, invented the fictitious ‘Gina’ and started commenting (some would argue trolling) on blogs such as Peter Woit’s own Not Even Wring, John Baez and Co.’s the n-Category Cafe and Clifford Johnson’s Asymptotia.

Gil then copy-pasted Gina’s comments, and the replies they provoked, into a leaflet and put it on his own blog in June 2009: “Gina says”, Adventures in the Blogosphere String War.

Back then, it was fun to waste an afternoon re-reading all of this, and I wrote about it here:

Now here’s an idea (June 2009)

Gina says, continued (August 2009)

With only minor editing, and including some drawings by Gil’s daughter, these leaflets have now resurfaced as a book…?!

After more than 10 years I had hoped that Gil would have taken this test-case to say some smart things about the math-blogging scene and its potential to attract more people to mathematics, or whatever.

In 2009 I wrote:

“Having read the first 20 odd pages in full and skimmed the rest, two remarks : (1) it shouldn’t be too difficult to borrow this idea and make a much better book out of it and (2) it raises the question about copyrights on blog-comments…”

Closing the gap: the quest to understand prime numbers

I can hear you sigh, but no, this is not yet another prime number book.

In May 2013, Yitang Zhang startled the mathematical world by proving that there are infinitely many prime pairs, each no more than 70.000.000 apart.

Perhaps a small step towards the twin prime conjecture but it was the first time someone put a bound on this prime gap.

Vicky Neal‘s book tells the story of closing this gap. In less than a year the bound of 70.000.000 was brought down to 246.

If you’ve read all popular prime books, there are a handful of places in the book where you might sigh: ‘oh no, not that story again’, but by far the larger part of the book explains exciting results on prime number progressions, not found anywhere else.

Want to know about sieve methods?

Which results made Tim Gowers or Terry Tao famous?

What is Szemeredi’s theorem or the Hardy-Littlewood circle method?

Ever heard about the Elliot-Halberstam or the Erdos-Turan conjecture? The work by Tao on Erdos discrepancy problem or that of James Maynard (and Tao) on closing the prime gap?

Closing the gap is the book to read about all of this.

But it is much more.

It tells about the origins and successes of the Polymath project, and details the progress made by Polymath8 on closing the gap, it gives an insight into how mathematics is done, what role conferences, talks and research institutes a la Oberwolfach play, and more.

Looking for a gift for that niece of yours interested in maths? Look no further. Closing the gap is a great book!

The latest on Mochizuki

Once in every six months there’s a flurry of online excitement about Mochizuki’s alleged proof of the abc-conjecture.

It seems to be that time of the year again.

The twitter-account of the ever optimistic @math_jin is probably the best source for (positive) news about IUT/ABC. He now announces the latest version of Yamashita’s ‘summary’ of Mochizuki’s proof:

Another informed source is Ed Frenkel. He sometimes uses his twitter-account @edfrenkel to broadcast Ivan Fesenko‘s enthusiasm.

Googling further, I stumbled upon an older (newspaper) article on the subject: das grosse ABC by Marlene Weiss, for which she got silver at the 2017 science journalism awards.

In case you prefer an English translation: The big ABC.

Here’s her opening paragraph:

“In a children’s story written by the Swiss author Peter Bichsel, a lonely man decides to invent his own language. He calls the table “carpet”, the chair “alarm clock”, the bed “picture”. At first he is enthusiastic about his idea and always thinks of new words, his sentences sound original and funny. But after a while, he begins to forget the old words.”

The article is less optimistic than other recent popular accounts of Mochizuki’s story, including:

Monumental proof to torment mathematicians for years to come in Nature by Davide Castelvecchi.

Hope Rekindled for Perplexing Proof in Quanta-magazine by Kevin Hartnett.

Baffling ABC maths proof now has impenetrable 300-page ‘summary’ in the New Scientist by Timothy Revell.

Marlene Weiss fears a sad ending:

“Table is called “carpet”, chair is called “alarm clock”, bed is called “picture”. In the story by Peter Bichsel, the lonely man ends up having so much trouble communicating with other people that he speaks only to himself. It is a very sad story.”

Perhaps things will turn out for the better, and we’ll hear about it sometime.

In six months, I’d say…

Life on Gaussian primes

At the moment I’m re-reading Siobhan Roberts’ biography of John Horton Conway, Genius at play – the curious mind of John Horton Conway.

In fact, I’m also re-reading Alexander Masters’ biography of Simon Norton, The genius in my basement – the biography of a happy man.

If you’re in for a suggestion, try to read these two books at about the same time. I believe it is beneficial to both stories.

Whatever. Sooner rather than later the topic of Conway’s game of life pops up.

Conway’s present pose is to yell whenever possible ‘I hate life!’. Problem seems to be that in book-indices in which his name is mentioned (and he makes a habit of checking them all) it is for his invention of the game of Life, and not for his greatest achievement (ihoo), the discovery of the surreal numbers.

If you have an hour to spare (btw. enjoyable), here are Siobhan Roberts and John Conway, giving a talk at Google: “On His LOVE/HATE Relationship with LIFE”

By synchronicity I encounter the game of life now wherever I look.

Today it materialised in following up on an old post by Richard Green on G+ on Gaussian primes.

As you know the Gaussian integers $\mathbb{Z}[i]$ have unique factorization and its irreducible elements are called Gaussian primes.

The units of $\mathbb{Z}[i]$ are $\{ \pm 1,\pm i \}$, so Gaussian primes appear in $4$- or $8$-tuples having the same distance from the origin, depending on whether a prime number $p$ remains prime in $\mathbb{Z}[i]$ or splits.

Here’s a nice picture of Gaussian primes, taken from Oliver Knill’s paper Some experiments in number theory

Note that the natural order of prime numbers is changed in the process (look at the orbits of $3$ and $5$ (or $13$ and $17$).

Because the lattice of Gaussian integers is rectangular we can look at the locations of all Gaussian primes as the living cell in the starting position on which to apply the rules of Life.

Here’s what happens after one move (left) and after three moves (right):

Knill has a page where you can watch life on Gaussian primes in action.

Even though the first generations drastically reduce the number of life spots, you will see that there remains enough action, at least close enough to the origin.

Knill has this conjecture:

When applying the game of life cellular automaton to the Gaussian primes, there is motion arbitrary far away from the origin.

What’s the point?

Well, this conjecture is equivalent to the twin prime conjecture for the Gaussian integers $\mathbb{Z}[i]$, which is formulated as

“there are infinitely pairs of Gaussian primes whose Euclidian distance is $\sqrt{2}$.”

How to dismantle scheme theory?

In several of his talks on #IUTeich, Mochizuki argues that usual scheme theory over $\mathbb{Z}$ is not suited to tackle problems such as the ABC-conjecture.

The idea appears to be that ABC involves both the additive and multiplicative nature of integers, making rings into ‘2-dimensional objects’ (and clearly we use both ‘dimensions’ in the theory of schemes).

So, perhaps we should try to ‘dismantle’ scheme theory, and replace it with something like geometry over the field with one element $\mathbb{F}_1$.

The usual $\mathbb{F}_1$ mantra being: ‘forget all about the additive structure and only retain the multiplicative monoid’.

So perhaps there is yet another geometry out there, forgetting about the multiplicative structure, and retaining just the addition…

In the forgetting can’t be that hard, can it?-post we have seen that the forgetful functor

$F_{+,\times}~:~\mathbf{rings} \rightarrow \mathbf{sets}$

(that is, forgetting both multiplicative and additive information of the ring) is representable by the polynomial ring $\mathbb{Z}[x]$.

So, what about our ‘dismantling functors’ in which we selectively forget just one of these structures:

$F_+~:~\mathbf{rings} \rightarrow \mathbf{monoids} \quad \text{and} \quad F_{\times}~:~\mathbf{rings} \rightarrow \mathbf{abelian~groups}$

Are these functors representable too?

Clearly, ring maps from $\mathbb{Z}[x]$ to our ring $R$ give us again the elements of $R$. But now, we want to encode the way two of these elements add (or multiply).

This can be done by adding extra structure to the ring $\mathbb{Z}[x]$, namely a comultiplication $\Delta$ and a counit $\epsilon$

$\Delta~:~\mathbb{Z}[x] \rightarrow \mathbb{Z}[x] \otimes \mathbb{Z}[x] \quad \text{and} \quad \epsilon~:~\mathbb{Z}[x] \rightarrow \mathbb{Z}$

The idea of the comultiplication being that if we have two elements $r,s \in R$ with corresponding ring maps $f_r~:~\mathbb{Z}[x] \rightarrow R \quad x \mapsto r$ and $f_s~:~\mathbb{Z}[x] \rightarrow R \quad x \mapsto s$, composing their tensorproduct with the comultiplication

$f_v~:~\mathbb{Z}[x] \rightarrow^{\Delta} \mathbb{Z}[x] \otimes \mathbb{Z}[x] \rightarrow^{f_r \otimes f_s} R$

determines another element $v \in R$ which we can take either the product $v=r.s$ or sum $v=r+s$, depending on the comultiplication map $\Delta$.

The role of the counit is merely sending $x$ to the identity element of the operation.

Thus, if we want to represent the functor forgetting the addition, and retaining the multiplication we have to put on $\mathbb{Z}[x]$ the structure of a biring

$\Delta(x) = x \otimes x \quad \text{and} \quad \epsilon(x) = 1$

(making $x$ into a ‘group-like’ element for Hopf-ists).

The functor $F_{\times}$ forgetting the multiplication but retaining the addition is represented by the Hopf-ring $\mathbb{Z}[x]$, this time with

$\Delta(x) = x \otimes 1 + 1 \otimes x \quad \text{and} \quad \epsilon(x) = 0$

(that is, this time $x$ becomes a ‘primitive’ element).

Perhaps this adds another feather of weight to the proposal in which one defines algebras over the field with one element $\mathbb{F}_1$ to be birings over $\mathbb{Z}$, with the co-ring structure playing the role of descent data from $\mathbb{Z}$ to $\mathbb{F}_1$.

As, for example, in my note The coordinate biring of $\mathbf{Spec}(\mathbb{Z})/\mathbb{F}_1$.