The beauty of the beast: the Hilbert scheme of infinite affine space

Various invariants have been computed for Hilbert schemes of surfaces, however our knowledge about Hilbert schemes (of points) of higher dimensional schemes is quite limited. In particular, Hilbert schemes of n-dimensional affine spaces have very complicated geometry for high n. In this talk we will discuss the homotopy type of the Hilbert scheme of infinite dimensional affine space, which turns out to be surprisingly simple. We will also mention the motivation for this result, coming from algebraic K-theory. Based on joint work with Marc Hoyois, Joachim Jelisiejew, Denis Nardin, and Burt Totaro.