When $p$ is inert in the quadratic imaginary field $E$ and $m<n$, unitary Shimura varieties of signature $(n,m)$ and a hyperspecial level subgroup at $p$, carry a natural foliationof height 1 and rank $m^{2}$ in the tangent bundle of their special fiber $S$. We study this foliation and show that it acquires singularities at deep Ekedahl–Oort strata, but that these singularities are resolved if we pass to a natural smooth moduli problem $S^{\sharp }$, a successive blow-up of $S$. Over the ($\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$-)ordinary locus we relate the foliation to Moonen’s generalized Serre–Tate coordinates. We study the quotient of $S^{\sharp }$ by the foliation, and identify it as the Zariski closure of the ordinary-étale locus in the special fiber $S_{0}(p)$ of a certain Shimura variety with parahoric level structure at $p$. As a result, we get that this ‘horizontal component’ of $S_{0}(p)$, as well as its multiplicative counterpart, are non-singular (formerly they were only known to be normal and Cohen–Macaulay). We study two kinds of integral manifolds of the foliation: unitary Shimura subvarieties of signature $(m,m)$, and a certain Ekedahl–Oort stratum that we denote $S_{\text{fol}}$. We conjecture that these are the only integral submanifolds.

We combine the ideas of a Harish-Chandra–Howe local character expansion, which can be centred at an arbitrary semisimple element, and a Kim–Murnaghan asymptotic expansion, which so far has been considered only around the identity. We show that, for most smooth, irreducible representations (those containing a good, minimal K-type), Kim–Murnaghan-type asymptotic expansions are valid on explicitly defined neighbourhoods of nearly arbitrary semisimple elements. We then give an explicit, inductive recipe for computing the coefficients in an asymptotic expansion for a tame supercuspidal representation. The only additional information needed in the inductive step is a fourth root of unity, which we expect to be useful in proving stability and endoscopic-transfer identities.

The cardinality of the set of $D\leqslant x$ for which the fundamental solution of the Pell equation $t^{2}-Du^{2}=1$ is less than $D^{1/2+\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}}$ with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}\in [\frac{1}{2},1]$ is studied and certain lower bounds are obtained, improving previous results of Fouvry by introducing the $q$-analogue of van der Corput method to algebraic exponential sums with smooth moduli.

In this paper we establish Springer correspondence for the symmetric pair $(\text{SL}(N),\text{SO}(N))$ using Fourier transform, parabolic induction functor, and a nearby cycle sheaf construction. As an application of our results we see that the cohomology of Hessenberg varieties can be expressed in terms of irreducible representations of Hecke algebras of symmetric groups at $q=-1$. Conversely, we see that the irreducible representations of Hecke algebras of symmetric groups at $q=-1$ arise in geometry.

Let $f$ be a quasi-homogeneous polynomial with an isolated singularity in $\mathbf{C}^{n}$. We compute the length of the ${\mathcal{D}}$-modules ${\mathcal{D}}f^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}}/{\mathcal{D}}f^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}+1}$ generated by complex powers of $f$ in terms of the Hodge filtration on the top cohomology of the Milnor fiber. When $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}=-1$ we obtain one more than the reduced genus of the singularity ($\dim H^{n-2}(Z,{\mathcal{O}}_{Z})$ for $Z$ the exceptional fiber of a resolution of singularities). We conjecture that this holds without the quasi-homogeneous assumption. We also deduce that the quotient ${\mathcal{D}}f^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}}/{\mathcal{D}}f^{\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}+1}$ is nonzero when $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}$ is a root of the $b$-function of $f$ (which Saito recently showed fails to hold in the inhomogeneous case). We obtain these results by comparing these ${\mathcal{D}}$-modules to those defined by Etingof and the second author which represent invariants under Hamiltonian flow.

Let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}(\cdot )$ be the classical Ramanujan $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}$-function and let $k$ be a positive integer such that $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}(n)\neq 0$ for $1\leqslant n\leqslant k/2$. (This is known to be true for $k<10^{23}$, and, conjecturally, for all $k$.) Further, let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}$ be a permutation of the set $\{1,\ldots ,k\}$. We show that there exist infinitely many positive integers $m$ such that $|\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}(m+\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}(1))|<|\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}(m+\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}(2))|<\cdots <|\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}(m+\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}(k))|$. We also obtain a similar result for Hecke eigenvalues of primitive forms of square-free level.

We study a wide class of affine varieties, which we call affine Fano varieties. By analogy with birationally super-rigid Fano varieties, we define super-rigidity for affine Fano varieties, and provide many examples and non-examples of super-rigid affine Fano varieties.