A Close Encounter Between Discrete Geometry and Universal Forms
65 participants from 19 countries met at Charles University for the Quadratic Lattices in Prague conference. The event continued a 30-year tradition of conferences on quadratic lattices that have so far mostly taken place in the USA, Korea, Chile, and Germany. This year, Czechia was the host for the first time.
The conference Quadratic Lattices in Prague was organized by Vitezslav Kala and Pavlo Yatsyna from Charles University and Daejun Kim from Korea University, with the assistance of other members of the UFOCLAN research group. „We kept the conference informal, so for example instead of a usual conference trip, we took smaller groups of participants on walks through our favorite places in the center of Prague,“ says Vitezslav Kala. „The UFOs on the conference website are also a small joke that started as an acronym for universal forms, one of the main topics of our research as well as this conference.“
Quadratic lattices and number fields form a key part of number theory. Their connections with computational aspects of discrete geometry and modern post-quantum cryptography were also discussed. These research areas study similar mathematical objects (such as lattices from the name of the conference) from different angles, but they form rather distinct mathematical communities. One of the goals of the conference thus was to bring these areas closer, which was hopefully accomplished, partly thanks to the 38 diverse talks.
