Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

By means of examples, I will illustrate the connection between orthogonal hypergeometric polynomials which satisfy interesting spectral and self-dual properties and representations of Lie algebras.

I will talk about some progress in proving the Degree Conjecture for torus knots. The conjecture states that the degree of a colored Jones polynomial colored by an irreducible representation of a simple Lie algebra g is locally a quadratic quasi-polynomial. This is joint work with Stavros Garoufalidis.

A set~$A$ of integers is a \textit{Sidon set} if all thesums~$a_1+a_2$, with~$a_1\leq a_2$ and~$a_1$,~$a_2\in A$, aredistinct. In the 1940s, Chowla, Erd\H{o}s and Tur\'an determinedasymptotically the maximum possible size of a Sidon set contained in$[n]=\{0,1,\dots,n-1\}$. We study Sidon sets contained in sparserandom sets of integers, replacing the `dense environment'~$[n]$ by asparse, random subset~$R$ of~$[n]$.Let~$R=[n]_m$ be a uniformly chosen, random $m$-element subsetof~$[n]$. Let~$F([n]_m)=\max\{|S|\colon S\subset[n]_m\hbox{ Sidon}\}$. An abridged version of our results states as follows.Fix a constant~$0\leq a\leq1$ and suppose~$m=m(n)=(1+o(1))n^a$. Thenthere is a constant $b=b(a)$ for which~$F([n]_m)=n^{b+o(1)}$ almostsurely. The function~$b=b(a)$ is a continuous, piecewise linearfunction of~$a$, not differentiable at two points:~$a=1/3$and~$a=2/3$; between those two points, the function~$b=b(a)$ isconstant.

Steinberg's Conjecture states that any planar graph without cycles of length four or five is three colorable. Borodin, Glebov, Montassier, and Raspaud showed that planar graphs without cycles of length four, five, or seven are three colorable and Borodin and Glebov showed that planar graphs without five cycles or triangles at distance at most two apart are three colorable. We prove a statement similar to both of these results: that any planar graph with no cycles of length four through six or cycles of length seven with incident triangles distance exactly two apart are three colorable. Special thanks to Robin Thomas for substantial contributions in the development of the proof.