SFU Discrete Math Seminar: Shuxing Li

As the underlying configuration behind many elegant finite structures, partial difference sets have been intensively studied in design theory, finite geometry, coding theory, and graph theory. In the first part of this talk, I will showcase that partial difference sets are indeed the fundamental structures explaining a series of "two-valued phenomena" in various mathematical branches. The second part concerns the construction of partial difference sets. Over the past three decades, there have been numerous constructions using very different and delicate approaches. Surprisingly, we discovered a common frame- work unifying and extending many previous constructions. This is joint work with Jonathan Jedwab.