This year's automorphic forms workshop will feature several thematic sessions devoted to the workshop's theme: mock modular forms and harmonic Maass forms. On his deathbed in 1920 Srinivasa Ramanujan wrote a letter to G.H. Hardy in which he gave 17 examples of peculiar functions, which he dubbed mock theta functions, that seemed to share many properties with modular forms and theta functions yet were not themselves modular forms. In the decades to follow a number of mathematicians, among them G. N. Watson, George Andrews and Atle Selberg, studied Ramanujan's mock theta functions, found more examples of them and were able to use them to prove a number of new identities. A major breakthrough occurred in 2002 when Sander Zwegers, then a graduate student of Don Zagier, showed that mock theta functions could be completed so as to produce harmonic weak Maass forms. In particular mock modular forms, which are not themselves modular, are the holomorphic parts of real analytic vector valued modular forms. In the years to follow Kathrin Bringmann and Ken Ono and their collaborators have developed this theory even further, making the connections to q-series more explicit and giving a number of beautiful applications, for instance to ranks of the partition function and the representation theory of sporadic simple groups. The aforementioned theory has been used to connect analytic number theory to a remarkably diverse collection of areas of mathematics.
As has always been the case with the automorphic forms workshop, participants are encouraged to contribute talks on all aspects of automorphic forms and related topics.
Over the last 28 years, the Annual Workshop on Automorphic Forms and Related Topics has remained a small and friendly conference. Those attending range from students to new PhD's to established researchers. For young researchers, the conference has provided support and encouragement. For accomplished researchers, it has provided the opportunity to mentor as well as a forum for exchanging ideas.
The workshop has become internationally recognized for both its high-quality research talks and its supportive atmosphere for junior researchers. Participants present cutting-edge research in all areas related to automorphic forms. These include mock modular forms, Maass wave forms, elliptic curves, Siegel and Jacobi modular forms, special values of L-functions, random matrices, quadratic forms, applications of modular forms, and many other topics.
In addition to research talks, the workshop has, in the past years, featured panel discussion sessions on the topics of grant writing, mentoring and research partnerships, REUs and outreach, and opportunities for international collaborations. Based on the success of these sessions, we plan to have similar panel sessions this year as well.
This year, the 2015 Automorphic Forms Workshop will be held in Ann Arbor, Michigan at East Hall (530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109). The Workshop will be organized and hosted by the University of Michigan.
Each participant is strongly encouraged to give a talk which is typically 20, 30, or 40 minutes in length (mostly your choice).
There will be a registration fee of $50 to pay for drinks and snacks. Please plan to pay this in cash or a check made out to the University of Michigan. We will unfortunately be unable to process credit cards.Register for the conference by emailing the organizers. If you wish to give a talk, you should submit your title and abstract by January 22, 2015 at the absolute latest.
Reserve a hotel room for the week of March 2-5 2015, so that you will be able to attend the workshop. The organizers have reserved blocks of rooms at several hotels, with information on our travel information page.
Pass along the address for this website to anyone that you think might be interested.