Ari Shnidman (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Title: Sums of two cubes.
Abstract:Â I'll give an overview of recent work with Alpoge-Bhargava showing that at least 10/21 (resp. 1/6) of integers are (resp. are not) a sum of two rational cubes. To prove this, we first show that the average size of the 2-Selmer group in any cubic twist family of elliptic curves is 3, by reducing to a certain counting problem: count integral G-orbits in a G-invariant quadric inside V, where G = SL_2^2 and V is the space of pairs of binary cubic forms. To perform the lattice point count, we combine tools from geometry of numbers and the circle method. Â My talk will focus on the more algebraic aspects of the problem, e.g.: how one reduces to the counting problem, and how one deduces the results about sums of two cubes from the Selmer average result. If I have time, I'll explain a result for cubic twist families of higher dimensional abelian varieties as well.