Short generating functions were first introduced by Barvinok to enumerate integer points in polyhedra. Adding in Boolean operations and projection, they form a whole complexity hierarchy with interesting structure. We study them in the computational complexity point of view. Assuming standard complexity assumption, we show that these functions cannot effectively represent certain truncated theta functions. Along the way, we will draw connection to ordinary number theoretic objects, such as the set of prime or square numbers. This talk assumes no prior knowledge of the subject. Some open questions will be offered at the end. Joint work with Igor Pak.

I will introduce the mod p derived spherical Hecke algebra of a p-adic group, and discuss its structure via a derived version of the Satake homomorphism. Then, I will survey some speculations about its action on the cohomology of arithmetic manifolds.

Suppose f is an n-variate polynomial with integer coefficients and degree d. Many natural computational problems involving the real zero set Z of f are algorithmically difficult. For instance, no known algorithm for computing the number of connected components of Z has complexity polynomial in n+d. Furthermore, no known general algorithm for deciding whether f has root over the p-adic has sub-exponential complexity. So it is worthwhile to seek families of polynomials where these questions are tractable.

Assuming f has n+2 monomial terms, and its exponent vectors do not all lie on an affine hyperplane, we prove that the isotopy type of Z can be determined in time polynomial in log d, for any fixed n. (This family of polynomials --- polynomials supported on circuits ---is highly non-trivial, since it already includes Weierstrass normal forms and several important examples from semi-definite programming.) We also show that a 1998 refinement of the abc-Conjecture (by Baker) implies that our algorithm is polynomial in n as well. Furthermore, the original abc-Conjecture implies that p-adic rational roots for f can be detected in the complexity class NP.

     These results were obtained in collaboration with Kaitlyn Phillipson and Daqing Wan.

In this talk, we shall discuss about some new results in the evaluation of some multiple zeta values (MZV). After a careful introduction of the multiple zeta values (Euler-Zagier sums) we point out some conjectures back in the early days of MZV and their combinatorial aspects.

At the core of our talk, we focus on Zagier's formula for the multiple zeta values, $\zeta(2, 2, \ldots, 2, 3, 2, 2,\ldots, 2)$ and its connections to Brown's proofs of the conjecture on the Hoffman basis and the zig-zag conjecture of Broadhurst in quantum field theory. Zagier's formula is a remarkable example of both strength and the limits of the motivic formalism used by Brown in proving Hoffman's conjecture where the motivic argument does not give us a precise value for the special multiple zeta values $\zeta(2, 2, \ldots, 2, 3, 2, 2,\ldots, 2)$ as rational linear combinations of products $\zeta(m)\pi^{2n}$ with $m$ odd.