NTSGrad/Abstracts

Sep 06

Brandon Alberts

Introduction to the Cohen-Lenstra Measure

The Cohen-Lenstra heuristics describe a conjectured probability distribution for the class group of quadratic fields. In this talk, I will give a brief introduction to the heuristic and how it is related to random groups. The remainder of the talk will focus on the Cohen-Lenstra probability measure for choosing a random p-group. This talk is based on a similar talk given by Bjorn Poonen.

Sep 13

Vlad Matei

Overview of the Discrete Log Problem

The discrete logarithm problem (DLP) was first proposed as a hard problem in cryptography in the seminal article of Diffie and Hellman. Since then, together with factorization, it has become one of the two major pillars of public key cryptography. In its simplest version for $\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z}$, the problem is given $b\hspace{2mm} ( \text{mod}\hspace{2mm} p)$ and $b^n \hspace{2mm}(\text{mod} \hspace{2mm} p)$ to find $n$. As far as we know, this problem is VERY HARD to solve quickly. Nobody has admitted publicly to having proved that the discrete log can't be solved quickly, but many very smart people have tried hard and not succeeded. This is a prep talk for the Thursday seminar 9/15/2016

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Sep 27

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Oct 25

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Nov 22

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Dec 6

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Dec 13

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Dec 20

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Organizer contact information

Brandon Alberts (blalberts@math.wisc.edu)

Megan Maguire (mmaguire2@math.wisc.edu)

Bobby Grizzard

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