The project "Shimura varieties and the Birch--Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture" (ShimBSD) addresses problems in number theory around the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, which is one of the most famous open problems in pure mathematics (selected by the Clay Institute in 2000 as one of their seven Millennium Prize problems). The problem concerns the arithmetic of elliptic curves, a class of equations in two variables, and predicts that the number of solutions of these equations is intimately related to an auxiliary object called an L-function. Any progress towards this conjecture would be a major landmark in pure mathematics, and could also impact other mathematical fields (including those directly relevant to real-world applications, such as cryptography, in which elliptic curves are ubiquitous).
The overall objectives of the project are to use new methods arising from the theory of Shimura varieties and automorphic forms to prove new cases of the Birch--Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, and its generalisations such as the Iwasawa main conjecture and the Bloch--Kato conjecture, using intricate mathematical constructs known as "Euler systems". The key objectives of the project are to construct and study new Euler systems, and to give criteria ("explicit reciprocity laws") for when these Euler systems are non-zero; if this can be successfully carried out, new instances of BSD and other conjectures will follow.