A well-known conjecture, often attributed to Serre, asserts that any motive over any number field has infinitely many ordinary reductions (in the sense that the Newton polygon coincides with the Hodge polygon). In the case of Hilbert modular cuspforms $f$ of parallel weight $(2,\ldots ,2)$, we show how to produce more ordinary primes by using the Sato–Tate equidistribution and combining it with the Galois theory of the Hecke field. Under the assumption of stronger forms of Sato–Tate equidistribution, we get stronger (but conditional) results. In the case of higher weights, we formulate the ordinariness conjecture for submotives of the intersection cohomology of proper algebraic varieties with motivic coefficients, and verify it for the motives whose $\ell$-adic Galois realisations are abelian on a finite-index subgroup. We get some results for Hilbert cuspforms of weight $(3,\ldots ,3)$, weaker than those for $(2,\ldots ,2)$.

We study compact complex three-dimensional manifolds with vanishing second Betti number. In particular, we show that a compact complex manifold homeomorphic to the six-dimensional sphere does carry any non-constant meromorphic function.

Given a manifold $M$ with a submanifold $N$, the deformation space ${\mathcal{D}}(M,N)$ is a manifold with a submersion to $\mathbb{R}$ whose zero fiber is the normal bundle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}(M,N)$, and all other fibers are equal to $M$. This article uses deformation spaces to study the local behavior of various geometric structures associated with singular foliations, with $N$ a submanifold transverse to the foliation. New examples include $L_{\infty }$-algebroids, Courant algebroids, and Lie bialgebroids. In each case, we obtain a normal form theorem around $N$, in terms of a model structure over $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}(M,N)$.

Fix $d\geqslant 2$ and a field $k$ such that $\operatorname{char}k\nmid d$. Assume that $k$ contains the $d$th roots of $1$. Then the irreducible components of the curves over $k$ parameterizing preperiodic points of polynomials of the form $z^{d}+c$ are geometrically irreducible and have gonality tending to $\infty$. This implies the function field analogue of the strong uniform boundedness conjecture for preperiodic points of $z^{d}+c$. It also has consequences over number fields: it implies strong uniform boundedness for preperiodic points of bounded eventual period, which in turn reduces the full conjecture for preperiodic points to the conjecture for periodic points. Our proofs involve a novel argument specific to finite fields, in addition to more standard tools such as the Castelnuovo–Severi inequality.

We prove a closed formula counting semistable twisted (or meromorphic) Higgs bundles of fixed rank and degree over a smooth projective curve of genus $g$ defined over a finite field, when the twisting line bundle degree is at least $2g-2$ (this includes the case of usual Higgs bundles). This yields a closed expression for the Donaldson–Thomas invariants of the moduli spaces of twisted Higgs bundles. We similarly deal with twisted quiver sheaves of type $A$ (finite or affine), obtaining in particular a Harder–Narasimhan-type formula counting semistable $U(p,q)$-Higgs bundles over a smooth projective curve defined over a finite field.

For ${\mathcal{C}}$ a factorisable and pivotal finite tensor category over an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero we show:

1. (1) ${\mathcal{C}}$ always contains a simple projective object;

2. (2) if ${\mathcal{C}}$ is in addition ribbon, the internal characters of projective modules span a submodule for the projective $\text{SL}(2,\mathbb{Z})$-action;

3. (3) the action of the Grothendieck ring of ${\mathcal{C}}$ on the span of internal characters of projective objects can be diagonalised;

4. (4) the linearised Grothendieck ring of ${\mathcal{C}}$ is semisimple if and only if ${\mathcal{C}}$ is semisimple.

Results (1)–(3) remain true in positive characteristic under an extra assumption. Result (1) implies that the tensor ideal of projective objects in ${\mathcal{C}}$ carries a unique-up-to-scalars modified trace function. We express the modified trace of open Hopf links coloured by projectives in terms of $S$-matrix elements. Furthermore, we give a Verlinde-like formula for the decomposition of tensor products of projective objects which uses only the modular $S$-transformation restricted to internal characters of projective objects. We compute the modified trace in the example of symplectic fermion categories, and we illustrate how the Verlinde-like formula for projective objects can be applied there.

We prove a representation stability result for the codimension-one cohomology of the level-three congruence subgroup of $\mathbf{SL}_{n}(\mathbb{Z})$. This is a special case of a question of Church, Farb, and Putman which we make more precise. Our methods involve proving finiteness properties of the Steinberg module for the group $\mathbf{SL}_{n}(K)$ for $K$ a field. This also lets us give a new proof of Ash, Putman, and Sam’s homological vanishing theorem for the Steinberg module. We also prove an integral refinement of Church and Putman’s homological vanishing theorem for the Steinberg module for the group $\mathbf{SL}_{n}(\mathbb{Z})$.

We introduce a new kind of action of a relatively hyperbolic group on a $\text{CAT}(0)$ cube complex, called a relatively geometric action. We provide an application to characterize finite-volume Kleinian groups in terms of actions on cube complexes, analogous to the results of Markovic and Haïssinsky in the closed case.