KAIST Discrete Math Seminar

The fact that the complete graph K5 does not embed in the plane has been generalized in two independent directions. On the one hand, the solution of the classical Heawood problem for graphs on surfaces established that Kn embeds in a closed surface M if and only if (n − 3)(n − 4) ≤ 6b1(M), where b1(M) is the first Betti number of M. On the other hand, van Kampen and Flores proved that the k-skeleton of the n-dimensional simplex (the higher-dimensional analogue of Kn+1 embeds in R2k if and only if n ≤ 2k + 1.
I will discuss a conjecture of Kuhnel that generalizes both the Heawood inequality and the van Kampen-Flores theorem, and present some partial results toward this conjecture.