## Seminars and Colloquia by Series

### Fractional coloring with local demands

Series
Graph Theory Seminar
Time
Thursday, April 11, 2019 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Tom KellyUniversity of Waterloo

In a fractional coloring, vertices of a graph are assigned subsets of the [0, 1]-interval such that adjacent vertices receive disjoint subsets. The fractional chromatic number of a graph is at most k if it admits a fractional coloring in which the amount of "color" assigned to each vertex is at least 1/k. We investigate fractional colorings where vertices "demand" different amounts of color, determined by local parameters such as the degree of a vertex. Many well-known results concerning the fractional chromatic number and independence number have natural generalizations in this new paradigm. We discuss several such results as well as open problems. In particular, we will sketch a proof of a "local demands" version of Brooks' Theorem that considerably generalizes the Caro-Wei Theorem and implies new bounds on the independence number. Joint work with Luke Postle.

### On the number of cliques in graphs with a forbidden clique minor

Series
Graph Theory Seminar
Time
Thursday, March 28, 2019 - 15:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Fan WeiStanford University

### Limitations of Sums of Squares Method for Turan Problems

Series
Graph Theory Seminar
Time
Thursday, October 11, 2018 - 12:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Greg BlekhermanGeorgia Tech
A sum of squares of real numbers is always nonnegative. This elementary observation is quite powerful, and can be used to prove graph density inequalities in extremal combinatorics, which address so-called Turan problems. This is the essence of semidefinite method of Lov\'{a}sz and Szegedy, and also Cauchy-Schwartz calculus of Razborov. Here multiplication and addition take place in the gluing algebra of partially labelled graphs. This method has been successfully used on many occasions and has also been extensively studied theoretically. There are two competing viewpoints on the power of the sums of squares method. Netzer and Thom refined a Positivstellensatz of Lovasz and Szegedy by showing that if f> 0 is a valid graph density inequality, then for any a>0 the inequality f+a > 0 can be proved via sums of squares. On the other hand, Hatami and Norine showed that testing whether a graph density inequality f > 0 is valid is an undecidable problem, and also provided explicit but complicated examples of inequalities that cannot be proved using sums of squares. I will introduce the sums of squares method, do several examples of sums of squares proofs, and then present simple explicit inequalities that show strong limitations of the sums of squares method. This is joint work in progress with Annie Raymond, Mohit Singh and Rekha Thomas.

### The Grid Theorem for Vertex Minors

Series
Graph Theory Seminar
Time
Thursday, August 30, 2018 - 12:00 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Rose McCartyUniversity of Waterloo
Vertex minors are a weakening of the notion of induced subgraphs that benefit from many additional nice properties. In particular, there is a vertex minor version of Menger's Theorem proven by Oum. This theorem gives rise to a natural analog of branch-width called rank-width. Similarly to the Grid Theorem of Robertson and Seymour, we prove that a class of graphs has unbounded rank-width if and only if it contains all "comparability grids'' as vertex minors. This is joint work with Jim Geelen, O-joung Kwon, and Paul Wollan.

### The Generalized Györi-Lovasz Theorem

Series
Graph Theory Seminar
Time
Thursday, April 19, 2018 - 13:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Alexander HoyerMath, GT
Györi and Lovasz independently proved that a k-connected graph can be partitioned into k subgraphs, with each subgraph connected, containing a prescribed vertex, and with a prescribed vertex count. Lovasz used topological methods, while Györi found a purely graph theoretical approach. Chen et al. later generalized the topological proof to graphs with weighted vertices, where the subgraphs have prescribed weight sum rather than vertex count. The weighted result was recently proven using Györi's approach by Chandran et al. We will use the Györi approach to generalize the weighted result slightly further. Joint work with Robin Thomas.

### The extremal functions for triangle-free graphs with excluded minors

Series
Graph Theory Seminar
Time
Thursday, April 12, 2018 - 13:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Youngho YooMath, GT
A classic theorem of Mader gives the extremal functions for graphs that do not contain the complete graph on p vertices as a minor for p up to 7. Motivated by the study of linklessly embeddable graphs, we present some results on the extremal functions of apex graphs with respect to the number of triangles, and on triangle-free graphs with excluded minors. Joint work with Robin Thomas.

### Four edge-independent spanning trees

Series
Graph Theory Seminar
Time
Thursday, March 8, 2018 - 13:30 for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Alexander HoyerMath, GT
For a graph G, a set of subtrees of G are edge-independent with root r ∈ V(G) if, for every vertex v ∈ V(G), the paths between v and r in each tree are edge-disjoint. A set of k such trees represent a set of redundant broadcasts from r which can withstand k-1 edge failures. It is easy to see that k-edge-connectivity is a necessary condition for the existence of a set of k edge-independent spanning trees for all possible roots. Itai and Rodeh have conjectured that this condition is also sufficient. This had previously been proven for k=2, 3. We prove the case k=4 using a decomposition of the graph similar to an ear decomposition. Joint work with Robin Thomas.

### Complex zeros and algorithms in hard problems of combinatorial counting

Series
Graph Theory Seminar
Time
Thursday, March 1, 2018 - 13:30 for 1.5 hours (actually 80 minutes)
Location
Skiles 005
Speaker
Alexander BarvinokUniversity of Michigan
This is Lecture 2 of a series of 3 lectures by the speaker. See the abstract on Tuesday's ACO colloquium of this week. (Please note that this lecture will be 80 minutes' long.)