Please note: This seminar will take place in person DC 2568 and online.
Kevin Pratt, Postdoctoral Researcher
Computer Science Department, New York University (NYU)
One of the major open problems in computer science to determine the exponent of matrix multiplication — the smallest number \omega such that two n-by-n matrices can be multiplied using n^{\omega +o(1)} arithmetic operations. While it is popularly conjectured that \omega = 2, we seem to be far from a proof (or disproof) of this.
In this talk I will discuss this problem in the context of the group-theoretic approach of Cohn and Umans. After giving background on this approach, I will highlight some open problems in additive combinatorics which could potentially yield \omega = 2, and discuss some recent progress towards these problems.
This seminar will take place in person (DC 2568) and on Zoom.