Solving the Kaplansky Unit Conjecture Using SAT Solvers

In this talk, Giles Gardam from the University of Bonn explores how computational approaches helped solve the 80-year-old Kaplansky unit conjecture for group rings. Learn about the mathematical context of this long-standing problem and discover how recasting it as a Boolean satisfiability problem (SAT) made it solvable not just theoretically but practically. The presentation demonstrates how decision problems about infinite groups, typically undecidable, can become semidecidable with appropriate oracles for the word problem. Part of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing and SLMath Joint Workshop on AI for Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science.