t-motives: Hodge structures, transcendence and other motivic aspects (09w5094)

The Banff International Research Station will host the "t-motives: Hodge structures, transcendence and other motivic aspects" workshop next week, September 27 - October 2, 2009.

In the mid 1980s, t-motives were defined by Greg Anderson as an analogue over function fields of abelian varieties over number fields and generalizing the previously introduced notion of elliptic module by Drinfeld. Many of the properties predicted for the conjectured motives over number fields by A. Grotendieck are shared by t-motives. However t-motives are in many ways simpler, and so results beyond those for Grothendieck's motives can be expected. In parts, this expectation does hold true (e.g. transcendence theory); in other parts, one obtains similar results (e.g. Galois representations, adic period spaces) but in some areas the function field setting reveals new and unexpected phenomena which makes the situation more complicated but also more interesting (e.g. Hodge structures, L-functions).

Leading experts as well as young researchers and researchers from neighboring fields from many continents meet at the Banff International Research station to discuss the state of the art in the subject in a single conference, to get to know each other, to initiate new research projects and benefit from the inspiring environment. The workshop also includes two lecture series on some of the must recent and important developments in the area.

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) is a collaborative Canada-US-Mexico venture that provides an environment for creative interaction as well as the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, with related disciplines and with industry. The research station is located at The Banff Centre in Alberta and is supported by Canada's Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), Alberta's Advanced Education and Technology, and Mexico's Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologí­a (CONACYT).