Mathematics Seminar
Date: Tuesday, 27 August 2024
Time: 2:00 PM
Venue: Seminar Hall
Uniform bounds on Sylvester-Gallai type configurations of polynomials
Akash Sengupta
University of Waterloo.
27-08-24

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Abstract

The classical Sylvester-Gallai theorem says that if a finite set of points in the Euclidean plane has the property that the line joining any two points contains a third point from the set, then all the points must be collinear. More generally, a Sylvester-Gallai type configuration is a finite set of geometric objects with certain "local" dependencies. A remarkable phenomenon is that the local constraints give rise to global dimension bounds for linear SG-type configurations, and such results have found far reaching applications to complexity theory and coding theory.

In this talk we will discuss non-linear generalizations of SG-type configurations which consist of polynomials. We will discuss how the commutative-algebraic principle of Stillman uniformity can shed light on low dimensionality of SG-configurations. I’ll talk about recent progress on showing that these non-linear SG-type configurations are indeed low-dimensional as conjectured by Gupta. This is based on joint work with R. Oliveira.