Geometry Advanced Class, Trinity Term 2026

Cohomological Hall Algebras

Organizers: Dominic Joyce, Pierrick Bousseau, Hulya Arguz, Chenjing Bu

Enquiries: e-mail dominic.joyce@maths.ox.ac.uk.

Tuesdays 9.30-11.0 in weeks 1-3 and 5-8, week 1 in L4, rest of term in C5. All welcome.

Let A be a geometric C-linear abelian category, such as the category coh(X) of coherent sheaves on a smooth projective complex manifold X, or the category mod-CQ of representations of a quiver Q. Let M be the moduli stack of objects in A. A Cohomological Hall Algebra (CoHA) is the structure of an associative algebra on the cohomology H*(M,Q). These are a part of Geometric Representation Theory.

  In good cases, people can identify the CoHA as some interesting infinite-dimensional algebra studied in Representation Theory, such as a Heisenberg algebra, a W-algebra, … CoHAs may also have interesting representations, for example, the CoHA of 0-dimensional sheaves on a complex projective surface X has a representation on the cohomology of the moduli scheme of torsion-free rank one sheaves on X (and so on the cohomology of Hilbert schemes of points on ).


  This is a large subject. We are open to suggestions from the audience, but provisionally we plan to focus on the following areas:

Prerequisites:
We will be assuming background in Algebraic Geometry at the level of Hartshorne: projective varieties, schemes, vector bundles, coherent sheaves, and so on. There will be some Artin stacks as well, but if you are prepared to believe that a stack is some kind of space which looks locally like the quotient of a scheme by a group, and don't ask too many questions, you can probably cope without having studied stacks. Having some idea of what an abelian category is would be helpful.

Provisional programme:

Week 1: Dominic: Classical CoHAs in the style of Schiffmann.

Week 2: Hulya: More about classical CoHAs, coherent sheaves on curves and surfaces.

Week 3: Pierrick: Kontsevich-Soibelman critical CoHAs.

Week 4: No meeting

Week 5: TBA

Week 6: TBA

Week 7: TBA

Week 8: TBA

PDF files to download:

Programme

Notes for week 1 by Dominic