***********************************
                * Princeton Discrete Math Seminar *
                ***********************************

Speaker: Jérémie Turcotte (McGill)

Thursday 12th October, 3:00 in Fine Hall 224.

Title: Progress towards the burning number conjecture

Graph burning was introduced independently by Brandenburg and Scott at Intel as a transmission problem on 
processors and Bonato, Janssen and Roshanbin as a model for the spread of information in social networks. 
The burning number b(G) of a graph G is the smallest integer k such that G can be covered by k balls of 
radii respectively 0,...,k-1. The Burning Number Conjecture claims that b(G)<=ceil(sqrt(n)), where n is the 
number of vertices of G. This bound would be tight for paths. The previous best bound for this problem, 
by Bastide et al., was b(G)<=sqrt(4n/3)+1. We prove that the Burning Number Conjecture holds asymptotically, 
that is b(G)<=(1+o(1))sqrt(n). Following a brief introduction to graph burning, this talk will focus on the 
general ideas behind the proof. This is joint work with Sergey Norin.


		----------------------------------


Anyone wishing to be added to or removed from the mailing list should
contact Paul Seymour (pds@math.princeton.edu)