Seminars and Colloquia by Series

Enumeration of interval graphs and d-representable complexes (Amzi Jeffs, CMU)

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Friday, April 12, 2024 - 15:15 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Speaker
Amzi JeffsCarnegie Mellon University

How many different ways can we arrange n convex sets in R^d? One answer is provided by counting the number of d-representable complexes on vertex set [n]. We show that there are exp(Theta(n^d log n))-many such complexes, and provide bounds on the constants involved. As a consequence, we show that d-representable complexes comprise a vanishingly small fraction of the class of d-collapsible complexes. In the case d = 1 our results are more precise, and improve the previous best estimate for the number of interval graphs.

Erdős–Hajnal and VC-dimension (Tung Nguyen, Princeton)

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Friday, March 29, 2024 - 15:15 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 308
Speaker
Tung NguyenPrinceton University

A hereditary class $\mathcal C$ of graphs is said to have the Erdős–Hajnal property if every $n$-vertex graph in $\mathcal C$ has a clique or stable set of size at least $n^c$. We discuss a proof of a conjecture of Chernikov–Starchenko–Thomas and Fox–Pach–Suk that for every $d\ge1$, the class of graphs of VC-dimension at most $d$ has the Erdős–Hajnal property. Joint work with Alex Scott and Paul Seymour.

Colorful Borsuk--Ulam Theorems (Zoe Wellner, CMU)

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Friday, March 15, 2024 - 15:15 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Speaker
Zoe WellnerCarnegie Mellon University

 The classical Borsuk--Ulam theorem states that for any continuous map  from the sphere to Euclidean space, $f\colon S^d\to R^d$, there is a pair of antipodal points that are identified, so $f(x)=f(-x)$. We prove a colorful generalization of the Borsuk–Ulam theorem. The classical result has many applications and consequences for combinatorics and discrete geometry and we in turn prove colorful generalizations of these consequences such as the colorful ham sandwich theorem, which allows us to prove a recent result of B\'{a}r\'{a}ny, Hubard, and Jer\'{o}nimo on well-separated measures as a special case, and Brouwer's fixed point theorem, which allows us to prove an alternative between KKM-covering results and Radon partition results.  This is joint work with Florian Frick.

Essentially tight bounds for rainbow cycles in proper edge-colourings (Matija Bucic, Princeton)

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Friday, March 1, 2024 - 15:15 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 308
Speaker
Matija BucicPrinceton University

An edge-coloured graph is said to be rainbow if it uses no colour more than once. Extremal problems involving rainbow objects have been a focus of much research as they capture the essence of a number of interesting problems in a variety of areas. A particularly intensively studied question due to Keevash, Mubayi, Sudakov and Verstraëte from 2007 asks for the maximum possible average degree of a properly edge-coloured graph on n vertices without a rainbow cycle. Improving upon a series of earlier bounds, Tomon proved an upper bound of (log n)^(2+o(1)) for this question. Very recently, Janzer-Sudakov and Kim-Lee-Liu-Tran independently removed the o(1) term in Tomon's bound. We show that the answer to the question is equal to (log n)^(1+o(1)).  
Joint work with: Noga Alon, Lisa Sauermann, Dmitrii Zakharov and Or Zamir.

ε-series by James Anderson, Sean Kafer, and Tantan Dai

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Friday, February 9, 2024 - 15:15 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 308
Speaker
James Anderson, Sean Kafer, Tantan DaiGeorgia Tech

James Anderson: Odd coloring (resp, PCF coloring) is a stricter form of proper coloring in which every nonisolated vertex is required to have a color in its neighborhood with odd multiplicity (resp, with multiplicity 1). Using the discharging method, and a new tool which we call the Forb-Flex method, we improve the bounds on the odd and PCF chromatic number of planar graphs of girth 10 and 11, respectively.

Sean Kafer: Many classical combinatorial optimization problems (e.g. max weight matching, max weight matroid independent set, etc.) have formulations as linear programs (LPs) over 0/1 polytopes on which LP solvers could be applied.  However, there often exist bespoke algorithms for these problems which, by merit of being tailored to a specific domain, are both more efficient and conceptually nicer than running a generic LP solver on the associated LP.  We will discuss recent results which show that a number of such algorithms (e.g. the shortest augmenting path algorithm, the greedy algorithm, etc.) can be "executed" by the Simplex method for solving LPs, in the sense that the Simplex method can be made to generate the same sequence of solutions when applied to the appropriate corresponding LP.

Tantan Dai: There has been extensive research on Latin Squares. It is simple to construct a Latin Square with n rows and n columns. But how do we define a Latin Triangle? What are the rows? When does a Latin Triangle exist? How can we construct them? In this talk, I will discuss two types of Latin Triangles and the construction of a countable family of Latin Triangles.

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Chromatic quasisymmetric functions

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Friday, January 26, 2024 - 15:15 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Sarah MasonWake Forest University

 Every graph is associated to a symmetric function constructed from proper colorings of the graph.  The Stanley-Stembridge conjecture posits that the expansion of the chromatic symmetric function into the elementary symmetric functions has positive coefficients for a certain class of graphs.  We explore a potential new approach to the Stanley-Stembridge Conjecture using combinatorial objects called "special rim hooks" and connect this to the "chromatic quasisymmetric functions" introduced by Shareshian and Wachs as a generalization of chromatic symmetric functions.  This is joint work with Meagan Hodge.

A Polynomial Method for Counting Colorings of $S$-labeled Graphs

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Friday, November 17, 2023 - 15:15 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 308
Speaker
Hemanshu KaulIllinois Institute of Technology

The notion of $S$-labeling, where $S$ is a subset of the symmetric group, is a common generalization of signed $k$-coloring, signed $\mathbb{Z}_k$-coloring, DP (or Correspondence) coloring, group coloring, and coloring of gained graphs that was introduced in 2019 by Jin, Wong, and Zhu.  In this talk we use a well-known theorem of  Alon and F\"{u}redi to present an algebraic technique for bounding the number of colorings of an $S$-labeled graph from below.  While applicable in the broad context of counting colorings of $S$-labeled graphs, we will focus on the case where $S$ is a symmetric group, which corresponds to DP-coloring (or, correspondence coloring) of graphs, and the case where $S$ is a set of linear permutations which is applicable to the coloring of signed graphs, etc.

 

This technique allows us to prove exponential lower bounds on the number of colorings of any $S$-labeling of graphs that satisfy certain sparsity conditions. We apply these to give exponential lower bounds on the number of DP-colorings (and consequently, number of  list colorings, or usual colorings) of families of planar graphs, and on the number of colorings of families of signed (planar) graphs. These lower bounds either improve previously known results, or are first known such results.

This joint work with Samantha Dahlberg and Jeffrey Mudrock.

Hyperbolic families, and Counting Colourings

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Friday, November 10, 2023 - 15:15 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 308
Speaker
Evelyne Smith-RobergeGeorgia Tech

Langhede and Thomassen conjectured in 2020 that there exists a positive constant c such that every planar graph G with 5-correspondence assignment (L,M) has at least 2^{c v(G)} distinct (L,M)-colourings. I will discuss a proof of this conjecture (which relies on the hyperbolicity of a certain family of graphs), a generalization of this result to some other embedded graphs (again, relying on a hyperbolicity theorem), and a few open problems in the area. Everything presented is joint work with Luke Postle.

The asymptotics of $r(4,t)$

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Friday, October 27, 2023 - 15:15 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 308
Speaker
Sam MattheusVrije Universiteit Brussel

I will give an overview of recent work, joint with Jacques Verstraete, where we gave an improved lower bound for the off-diagonal Ramsey number $r(4,t)$, solving a long-standing conjecture of Erd\H{o}s. Our proof has a strong non-probabilistic component, in contrast to previous work. This approach was generalized in further work with David Conlon, Dhruv Mubayi and Jacques Verstraete to off-diagonal Ramsey numbers $r(H,t)$ for any fixed graph $H$. We will go over of the main ideas of these proofs and indicate some open problems.

Packing colorings

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Friday, October 6, 2023 - 15:15 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 308
Speaker
Ewan DaviesColorado State University

We discuss some recent results in graph coloring that show somewhat stronger conclusions in a similar parameter range to traditional coloring theorems. We consider the standard setup of list coloring but ask for a decomposition of the lists into pairwise-disjoint list colorings. The area is new and we discuss many open problems.

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