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Modern bounds on sphere packing density

Special Events

Speaker: Prof. Greg Kuperberg, UC Davis
Location: 693 Kerr
Start time: Fri, Nov 15 2002, 1:10PM

Following chapters 9 and 13 of the famous textbook "Sphere packings, lattices, and groups", by Conway and Sloane, I will show how to use linear programming and representation theory to derive upper bounds on sphere packing density. The main case considered will be of sphere packings in spherical geometry, which includes the kissing number problem.

This is the first of 2 one-hour survey lectures for graduate students as part of the RFG in Combinatorics. The second part will be Friday Nov 22 at the same time and place.