Publication Date

Spring 2018

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Dominic Lanphier (Director), Tom Richmond, John Spraker, and Jason Rosenhouse

Degree Program

Department of Mathematics

Degree Type

Master of Science

Abstract

Hadwiger's conjecture is one of the deepest open questions in graph theory, and Cayley graphs are an applicable and useful subtopic of algebra.

Chapter 1 will introduce Hadwiger's conjecture and Cayley graphs, providing a summary of background information on those topics, and continuing by introducing our problem. Chapter 2 will provide necessary definitions. Chapter 3 will give a brief survey of background information and of the existing literature on Hadwiger's conjecture, Hamiltonicity, and the isoperimetric number; in this chapter we will explore what cases are already shown and what the most recent results are. Chapter 4 will give our decomposition theorem about PSL2 (R). Chapter 5 will continue with corollaries of the decomposition theorem, including showing that Hadwiger's conjecture holds for our Cayley graphs. Chapter 6 will finish with some interesting examples.

Disciplines

Algebra | Other Mathematics | Physical Sciences and Mathematics

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