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Colloquium: Sudhir Ghorpade (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay)

Thursday, May 23
4:00 PM
135 TMCB

Title: Vector spaces, Matrices, and Linear Recurrences over Finite Fields

Abstract: We will discuss a number of questions concerning basic objects in algebra, such as polynomials, matrices, and vector spaces in the setting of a finite ground field. Here is a sampling of some of the simpler questions that we may ask.

  1. What is the maximum possible order of an element of the general linear group over a given finite field, and how many elements there are of this order?
  2. What is the probability that two randomly chosen polynomials of a given positive degree with entries in a given finite field are relatively prime?

We will discuss, in particular, a question of Niederrieter that was open since 1995 (and until recently) and the recent progress on it. Connections and applications to cryptography via the so-called linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs) or in other words, homogeneous linear recurrences over finite fields, will also be discussed.

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