Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

Come learn about chip firing games! While simple to define, these games provide surprisingly strong combinatorial tools for studying algebraic curves. Fueling this theory is a strong analogy between algebraic curves and finite graphs. In ways we will make more precise, many of the features of algebraic curves can be studied in graphs, however certain parts of the theory don’t make it through intact. In this talk we will focus on a central question in this analogy: which graphs are the best models for algebraic curves? We will set up the background needed to ask this question as well as the tools and techniques used to study such graphs. No prior knowledge of chip-firing or algebraic geometry needed.