Hecke modifications of vector bundles

Abstract: Hecke modifications of vector bundles have played a significant role in several areas of mathematics. They appear in subjects ranging from number theory to complex geometry. This article intends to be a friendly introduction to the subject. We give an overview of how Hecke modifications appear in the literature, explain their origin and their importance in number theory and classical algebraic geometry. Moreover, we report the progress made in describing Hecke modifications explicitly and why these explicit descriptions are important. We describe all the Hecke modifications of the trivial rank $2$ vector bundle over a closed point of degree $5$ in the projective line, as well as all the vector bundles over a certain elliptic curve, which admit a rank $2$ and degree $0$ trace bundle as a Hecke modification. This result is not present in existing literature.