Mathematical Sciences Department Discrete Math Seminar: Bill Martin, WPI

Title: Transitive subsets of finite general linear groups

Abstract: In this talk, I will survey the work of Alena Ernst (U. Paderborn) and her thesis advisor Kai-Uwe Schmidt. I will briefly go over the character theory of GL(n,q), the group of all linear transformations from V to itself where V is a vector space of dimension n over a finite field of order q. I will outline Alena's characterization of flag-transitive subsets of GL(n,q) and compare it to what happens in the symmetric group (Sagan & WJM,  2006). As time permits, I’ll discuss an interesting Erdos-Ko-Rado result in Alena's thesis.