On December 16, 2025, Chi Hoi Yip from Georgia Institute of Technology gave a talk at the Discrete Math Seminar on the maximum size of a clique in Paley graphs and cyclotomic graphs. The title of his talk was “Cliques in Paley graphs and cyclotomic graphs“.
Chi Hoi Yip, Cliques in Paley graphs and cyclotomic graphs
Given a prime power $q \equiv 1 \pmod 4$, the Paley graph of order $q$ is the graph defined over $\mathbb{F}_q$ (the finite field with $q$ elements), such that two vertices are adjacent if and only if their difference is a square in $\mathbb{F}_q$. In this talk, I will present some recent progress on the clique number of Paley graphs of non-square order, the characterization of maximum cliques in Paley graphs of square order, as well as their extensions to cyclotomic graphs. In particular, I will highlight a new proof of the Van Lint–MacWilliams’ conjecture using ideas from arithmetic combinatorics.


