Date & Time: Monday September 10, 2012, 15:30-17:00.
Venue: Ramanujan Hall
Title: Circular units and a generalisation
Speaker: Prof. Ramesh Sreekantan, ISI Bangalore
Abstract: Circular units are units in cyclotomic fields given by special values of trigonometric functions. Their norms appear naturally as special values of zeta functions of real quadratic fields. In this talk we will discuss a generalisation of this situation to products of elliptic curves over the rationals - where an analogue of a circular unit appears as a special value of the L-function of the product of elliptic curves. Not surprisingly this uses some classical formulas such as the Rankin-Selberg integral formula and the Kronecker Limit formula.