Return to Colloquia & Seminar listing
Flexibility and the Steiner ratio conjecture
Geometry/Topology| Speaker: | David Kirszenblat, University of Melbourne |
| Location: | 2112 MSB |
| Start time: | Tue, Mar 18 2014, 3:10PM |
Description
Steiner trees are minimal networks with applications in the
design of communication and transportation networks as well as microchips. The
Steiner ratio is a measure for the performance of a Steiner minimal tree compared with
that of a minimum spanning tree. In 1968, Gilbert and Pollak gave a conjecture for
the lower bound for the Steiner ratio. In this talk, I will briefly describe the
history of the Euclidean Steiner tree problem as well as some previous approaches
towards verifying the ratio conjecture. I will then provide an overview of the
ideas used to tackle the eight point case.