Events

Title: Counting the $c_2$ invariant on the circulant family of graphs

Abstract:

The algebro-geometric invariant on Feynman Diagrams called the $c_2$ invariant is a useful tool for detecting properties of Feynman periods. We present this identity on graphs that originate from the scalar $\phi_4$-theory with a purely combinatorial perspective and go over some strategies for computing it. We will further narrow our focus onto the circulant family of graphs and present some explicit results.

Title: Subdivergence-free gluings of trees

Abstract:

Motivated by questions in quantum field theory, we introduce a purely combinatorial problem of counting subdivergence-free gluings of trees. We present closed-form expressions counting subdivergence-free gluings for four different families of trees, as well as an algorithm to count subdivergence-free gluings of arbitrary pairs of trees. This is joint work with Clair Dai and Karen Yeats.

Title: What do graph planarity and homomorphism counts have to do with quantum mechanics?

Abstract:

I will introduce the notion of quantum isomorphisms of graphs. These are defined in terms of a game in which two cooperating players attempt to convince a referee that two given graphs are isomorphic.

Title: Constructing broken SIDH parameters: a tale of De Feo, Jao, and Plut's serendipity.

Abstract:

This talk is motivated by analyzing the security of the cryptographic key exchange protocol SIDH (Supersingular Isogeny Diffie-Hellman), introduced by 2011 by De Feo, Jao, and Plut. We will first recall some mathematical background as well as the protocol itself. The 'keys' in this protocol are elliptic curves, which are typically described by equations in x and y of the form y^2 = x^3 + ax + b. Of importance in this talk will be 'endomorphisms' associated to elliptic curves: these are functions that map an elliptic curve to itself which also satisfy some nice properties.

Title: State transfer and the size of the graph

Abstract:

If there is perfect state transfer between two vertices at distance d, how small can the graph be compared to d? This question is motivated by the fact that the known infinite families of graphs admitting state transfer at increasingly large distances are all obtained from graph products, thus their sizes grow exponentially compared to their diameter.

Title: An Algorithmic Reduction Theory for Binary Codes: LLL and more

Joint work with Thomas Debris-Alazard and Wessel van Woerden

Abstract:

Lattice reduction is the task of finding a basis of short and somewhat orthogonal vectors of a given lattice. In 1985 Lenstra, Lenstra and Lovasz proposed a polynomial time algorithm for this task, with an application to factoring rational polynomials. Since then, the LLL algorithm has found countless application in algorithmic number theory and in cryptanalysis.

Title: Laplacian Quantum Fractional Revival On Graphs

Abstract:

Given a set of quantum bits, we can model their interactions using graphs. The continuous-time quantum walks on a graph can be viewed as the Schrödinger dynamics of a particle hopping between adjacent vertices. In this talk, the transition matrix of the continuous-time quantum walk is given by $e^{-itL}$, where $L$ is the graph’s Laplacian matrix.

Title: Pure pairs

Abstract:

A pure pair in a graph G is a pair of subsets A and B of the vertex set such that between A and B, either all edges or no edges are present in G. This concept was first introduced in connected with the Erdos-Hajnal conjecture, but has since developed a life of its own. I will give an overview of results and open questions on pure pairs.

Based on joint work with Maria Chudnovsky, Jacob Fox, Alex Scott, and Paul Seymour.

Title: Scaffolds

Abstract:

Building on the work of various authors who have used tensors in the study of association schemes and spin models, I propose the term "scaffold" for certain tensors that have been represented by what are sometimes called "star-triangle diagrams" in the literature. The main goal of the talk is to introduce and motivate these objects which somewhat resemble partition functions as they appear in combinatorics. (The exact definition is too cumbersome to include here.)

Title: Recent proximity results in integer linear programming

Abstract:

We consider the proximity question in integer linear programming (ILP) --- Given a vector in a polyhedron, how close is the nearest integer vector? Proximity has been studied for decades with two influential results due to Cook et al. in 1986 and Eisenbrand and Weismantel in 2018. We derive new upper bounds on proximity using sparse integer solutions and mixed integer relaxations of the integer hull. When compared to previous bounds, these new bounds depend less on the dimensions of the constraint matrix and more on the data in the matrix.