# Online talk: Kazuhiro Nomoto

Monday, January 18, 3pm ET (8pm GMT, 9am Tue NZDT)
Kazuhiro Nomoto, University of Waterloo
$I_t$-free, triangle-free binary matroids

Password: The same format as last year. Email [rose.mccarty ~at~ uwaterloo ~.~ ca] if you need the password.
##### Abstract:

For any integer $t \geq 1$, we say that a simple binary matroid is $I_t$-free if no rank-$t$ flats are independent. It is triangle-free if it has no circuit of size $3$. In this talk, we discuss a few problems regarding simple $I_t$-free, triangle-free binary matroids, with some partial results.

Joint work with Peter Nelson.

# Online talk: ‪Stephan Kreutzer‬

Monday, January 11, 3pm ET (8pm GMT, 9am Tue NZDT)
Stephan Kreutzer, TU Berlin
Directed tangles

##### Abstract:

A tangle in a graph $G$ is a consistent orientation of all low-order separations of $G$.
In this way, tangles define the “highly connected” pieces of the graph.

Robertson and Seymour introduced the concept of tangles as part of their graph minor series and proved that the maximal tangles in a graph form a tree structure. More formally, every graph has a tree-decomposition whose pieces correspond to its maximal tangles. This tangle decomposition theorem is one of the essential steps in their proof of the graph minor theorem and has also found many other applications.

Recently, we defined “directed tangles”, the analogue of tangles for digraphs, and showed that again every digraph can be decomposed into a tree of its maximal tangles.

In this talk I will introduce directed tangles and present a proof of the main directed tangle decomposition theorem. I will also focus on the differences between the directed and undirected case and sketch potential applications of the directed tangle decomposition theorem.

The talk is based on joint with with Archontia Giannopoulou, Ken-ichi Kawarabayashi, and O-Joung Kwon.

# Online event: Open problems session

The open problems session is next week! There are two sessions: Session 1 loosely focused on matroids and Session 2 loosely focused on graphs. Anyone interested in the topics is welcome to join; no registration is required. The sessions will not be recorded, but we will update this page linking to the slide(s) of each presenter.

Date: Monday, December 14 (1:30 – 4:00pm ET)

Schedule:
Session 1 (matroids): 1:30 – 2:30pm ET
Session 2 (graphs): 3:00 – 4:00pm ET
Beer time: After that 🙂

Format: We’ll have a short presentation about each problem followed by some time for discussion. There will likely be time at the end for further impromptu problems as well. We will also link to a Discord server as a suggested way of discussing problems via text.

Session 1 presenters:
Nathan Bowler – slides
Daniel Bernstein – slides
Dillon Mayhew – slides
Peter Nelson – slides
Relinde Jurrius – slides
Jim Geelen – slides

Session 2 presenters:
Maria Chudnovsky – slides
Youngho Yoo – slides
Chun-Hung Liu – slides
Ben Moore – slides
Johannes Carmesin – slides
Rose McCarty – slides