Toric geometry of series-parallel graphs

Series
Combinatorics Seminar
Time
Friday, April 17, 2009 - 3:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 255
Speaker
Guantao Chen – Georgia State University
Organizer
Prasad Tetali
Let G be a graph and K be a field. We associate to G a projective toric variety X_G over K, the cut variety of the graph G. The cut ideal I_G of the graph G is the ideal defining the cut variety. In this talk, we show that, if G is a subgraph of a subdivision of a book or an outerplanar graph, then the minimal generators are quadrics. Furthermore we describe the generators of the cut ideal of a subdivision of a book.