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Galois Seminar

Friday, February 1, 2008 - 3:15pm

Jakob Stix

Penn and Univ. Bonn

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 4N30

Period and index are invariants of a smooth projective curve that have value 1 in the presence of a rational point. The section conjecture predicts that curves over number fields whose arithmetic fundamental group extension splits will have rational points. We will examine the effect of the presence of a splitting on the invariants period and index and will find examples where the section conjecture holds for trivial reasons.