Presented By: Colloquium Series - Department of Mathematics
Colloquium Seminar: A remarkable ball quotient, the Monster group, and algebraic geometry
Eduard Looijenga (U. of Chicago)
About 27 years ago Allcock found a ball quotient of dimension 13, which is intriguing for at least two reasons: its expected connections with some of the sporadic finite simple groups (such as the Monster group) and the likelihood of it having a modular interpretation. I shall first review some known examples of modular ball quotients and then describe recent progress on the moonshine properties of this ball quotient.