English

An asymptotic lower bound on the number of polyominoes

Combinatorics 2025-07-15 v3

Abstract

Let P(n)P(n) be the number of polyominoes of nn cells and λ\lambda be Klarner's constant, that is, λ=limnP(n)n\lambda=\lim_{n\to\infty} \sqrt[n]{P(n)}. We show that there exist some positive numbers A,TA,T, so that for every nn P(n)AnTlognλn. P(n) \ge An^{-T\log n} \lambda^n. This is somewhat a step toward the well known conjecture that there exist positive C,θC,\theta so that P(n)CnθλnP(n)\sim Cn^{-\theta}\lambda^n for every nn. In fact, if we assume another popular conjecture that P(n)/P(n1)P(n)/P(n-1) is increasing, we can get rid of logn\log n to have P(n)AnTλn. P(n)\ge An^{-T}\lambda^n. Beside the above theoretical result, we also conjecture that the ratio of the number of some class of polyominoes, namely inconstructible polyominoes, over P(n)P(n) is decreasing, by observing this behavior for the available values. The conjecture opens a nice approach to bounding λ\lambda from above, since if it is the case, we can conclude that λ<4.1141, \lambda < 4.1141, which is quite close to the current best lower bound λ>4.0025\lambda > 4.0025 and greatly improves the current best upper bound λ<4.5252\lambda < 4.5252. The approach is merely analytically manipulating the known or likely properties of the function P(n)P(n), instead of giving new insights of the structure of polyominoes. The techniques can be applied to other lattice animals and self-avoiding polygons of a given area with almost no change.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.14909,
  title  = {An asymptotic lower bound on the number of polyominoes},
  author = {Vuong Bui},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.14909},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

20 pages, 4 figures; final version before publication