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                * Princeton Discrete Math Seminar *
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Date: Thursday 9th March, 3:00 in Fine Hall 224.
 
Speaker:  Michael Tait (CMU)

Title: Four conjectures in spectral extremal graph theory

We discuss how to prove four conjectures in extremal graph theory where the 
graph invariant being maximized is a function of the eigenvalues or 
eigenvectors of the adjacency matrix of the graph.  Our most difficult 
result proves a conjecture of Boots and Royle from 1991: the planar graph 
of maximum spectral radius is the join of an edge and a path of length
$n-2$. All of our proofs follow a similar template, and we will end the talk 
with several problems to which one might try to apply our method. This is 
joint work with Josh Tobin.


Next week:  Alex Scott

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