BIRS Workshop — Arithmetic Aspects of Deformation Theory

One focus of modern number theory is to study symmetries of numbers that are roots of polynomial equations. Collections of such symmetries are called Galois groups, and they often encode interesting arithmetical information. The theory of Galois representations provides a way to understand these Galois groups and in particular, how they interact with other areas of mathematics. This workshop will investigate how these Galois representations can be put together into families, and search for new arithmetic applications of these families.