Brandeis-Harvard-MIT-Northeastern

JOINT MATHEMATICS COLLOQUIUM


Dimers and inscribing rational curves in polygons

Richard Kenyon

University of British Columbia

Brandeis University

Thursday, April 6, 2006

Talk at 4:30 p.m. in 317 Goldsmith Hall

Tea at 4:00 p.m. in 300 Goldsmith Hall


Abstract: This is joint work with Andrei Okounkov. Given a polygon P with 3n sides, when can you find a degree-n rational curve inscribed in P? We answer this question for the family of polygons having sides with slopes 0,1,infinity. This result arose from a completely different area, studying the so-called dimer model of statistical mechanics. We'll show the connection and give a sketch of the proof.



Home Web page: Alexandru I. Suciu Posted: March 21, 2006
Comments to: a.suciu@neu.edu URL: http://www.math.neu.edu/bhmn/kenyon06.html