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Research seminar in Discrete Mathematics
MaxCut, orthonormal representations, and extension complexity of polytopes
MaxCut, orthonormal representations, and extension complexity of polytopes
Organizer
Benjamin Sudakov
Speaker
Igor Balla
Time
Tuesday, March 25, 2025 5:05 PM - 6:15 PM
Venue
Online
Online
Zoom 787 662 9899
(BIMSA)
Abstract
In this talk, we will discuss several extremal problems involving concepts like MaxCut, the Lovász theta function, minimum semidefinite rank, and extension complexity of polytopes. We will show how a bipartite generalization of Alon and Szegedy’s nearly orthogonal vectors implies strong bounds for these problems. Some of the results that will be presented are in joint work with Letzter and Sudakov, or Janzer and Sudakov.
Speaker Intro
Igor Balla is a Strauch Postdoctoral Fellow at the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (formerly MSRI) in Berkeley. He earned his Ph.D. from ETH Zurich under the supervision of Benny Sudakov and has held postdoctoral positions at Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Masaryk University. Igor is broadly interested in combinatorics and its connections to linear algebra, and his research focuses on certain extremal problems lying at the intersection of these areas. Apart from being beautiful and interesting in their own right, these problems turn out to have connections to a wide variety of fields including probability, geometry, applied mathematics, theoretical computer science, and quantum physics.