Piotr Bacik

Contact

Emails in decreasing order of preference:
  1. piotr.bacik(at)stcatz.ox.ac.uk
  2. pbacik(at)mpi-sws.org
  3. ppbacik(at)gmail.com

About me

I'm a second year DPhil student on the Oxford-Max-Planck Doctoral Program (joint with MPI-SWS in Saarbrücken) under the supervision of Joël Ouaknine and James Worrell.

My current research interests lie mainly in linear dynamical systems, in particular the Skolem Problem and questions surrounding zeros of linear recurrence sequences.

Most of my work uses techniques in algebraic number theory, which mostly involves bashing linear recurrence sequences with a p-adic hammer until something interesting pops out.

Previously, I completed a Bachelor's and Master's in Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.

I'm in Oxford from October 2026 to the end of June 2027.

Publications

  1. Twisted Rational Zeros and Local-Global Principles for Linear Recurrence Sequences [arxiv]
    P. Bacik
    Submitted
  2. On the Subspace Orbit Problem and the Simultaneous Skolem Problem [link] [arxiv]
    P. Bacik, A. Varonka
    Proc. of LICS 2026
  3. On Variable-Bounded Non-Linear Expansions of Presburger Arithmetic
    [link] [arxiv]
    P. Bacik, J. Nieuwveld, J. Ouaknine, M. Vahanwala, M. Venkatesh, E.R. Wieser
    Proc. of LICS 2026
  4. On the p-adic Skolem Problem [link] [arxiv]
    P. Bacik, J. Ouaknine, D. Purser, J. Worrell
    Proc. of STACS 2026
  5. On the Complexity of the Skolem Problem at Low Orders [link] [arxiv]
    P. Bacik, J. Ouaknine, J. Worrell
    Proc. of SODA 2026
  6. Completing the picture for the Skolem Problem on order-4 linear recurrence sequences [link] [arxiv]
    P. Bacik
    TheoretiCS, Volume 4, 2025

Software