Friday, September 25, 2009 3:30 pm
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4:30 pm
EDT (GMT -04:00)
Matroids, Diophantine equations, and decidability
Speaker: | Jim Geelen |
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Affiliation: | University of Waterloo |
Room: | Mathematics & Computer Building (MC) 5158 |
Abstract:
For a field F we consider the problem of deciding whether or not a given matroid is representable over the field. We show that this is equivalent to the problem of deciding whether or not a given system of Diophantine equations has a solution over F. This is joint work with Shalev Ben David.
The talk will be accessible to a general mathematics audience. Knowledge of matroid theory is not required.