Richard P. Stanley Seminar in Combinatorics

Speaker: Greg Kuperberg (UC Davis) Title: My journey with the alternating sign matrix theorem Abstract: I will talk about the alternating sign matrix theorem and its proof from the point of view of my own experience with it: what led me to this problem, what I was thinking while working on it, and how I interpret the aftermath. Key elements include round enumerations in combinatorics, bijective versus algebraic proofs, Kasteleyn's theorem versus the Yang-Baxter equation, and factor exhaustion as a method to evaluate determinants. I will also discuss the sequel, symmetry classes of alternating sign matrices.