Event

Talk
On some combinatorial zeta functions
Prof. Dr. Christian Kassel
13 May 2015, 14:00

Zeta functions appear in many fields of mathematics and in various guises. I will give examples of zeta functions obtained from counting points in a variety, loops in a graph, or words in an alphabet. In some emblematic cases such a function is rational. I will next concentrate on zeta functions constructed from matrices with entries in group rings. As Kontsevich first proved, some of the latter zeta functions, though not rational, are algebraic. For such zeta functions I will explain where the algebraicity comes from and show examples where they can be computed explicitly.