Expanding Horizons of Inter-universal Teichmüller Theory

The elucidation of the way in which the additive and multiplicative structure of the integers are intertwined with one another is one of the most important and central themes in number theory. In August 2012, Shinichi Mochizuki (the proposer and chief organizer of the present RIMS Research Project) released preprints of a series of papers concerning "Inter-universal Teichmüller Theory", a theory that constitutes an important advance with regard to elucidating this intertwining. Moreover, the proof of the "ABC Conjecture", which follows as a consequence of the theory, attracted worldwide attention. In the roughly six and a half years since the release of these preprints:

・The number of researchers who have already acquired a thorough understanding of the theory, as well as advanced learners of the theory, has increased slowly, but steadily.

・Quite a number of surveys and related expositions of the theory (7 of which have been made public, while another 2 are currently in preparation) have been written, not only by the author of the theory, but also by researchers who have already acquired a thorough understanding of the theory.

・Although it is difficult to ascertain the precise number, at least on the order of 30 lectures and small-scale workshops on the theory have been conducted all over the world (in Japan, the UK, Russia, the US, China, Germany, and France).

・At least 4 large-scale workshops (of one to two weeks in length) on the theory have been conducted not only within Japan (in Kyoto, March 2015 and July 2016), but also in China (in Beijing, July 2015) and the UK (in Oxford, December 2015).

As a result of these activities, a sort of "inter-universal Teichmüller theory community", consisting of between ten and twenty researchers, is currently in the process of forming. Moreover, as a result of advances in research, such as combinatorial anabelian geometry, based on ideas closely related to the ideas that underlie inter-universal Teichmüller theory, important links between research on inter-universal Teichmüller theory and research concerning the Grothendieck-Teichmüller group and the absolute Galois group of the rational numbers have begun to form.

In light of these developments, the present RIMS Research Project seeks to bring together various researchers not only from the "inter-universal Teichmüller theory community", but also researchers interested in various forms of mathematics related to inter-universal Teichmüller theory, and to provide all such researchers an opportunity to engage in lively discussions concerning the various developments discussed above in an environment in which interaction for periods on the order of months is possible, that is to say, unlike the situation in the case of a single workshop (i.e., which typically only lasts for roughly a week).