English

Counting compositions over finite abelian groups

Combinatorics 2017-10-19 v1

Abstract

We find the number of compositions over finite abelian groups under two types of restrictions: (i) each part belongs to a given subset and (ii) small runs of consecutive parts must have given properties. Waring's problem over finite fields can be converted to type~(i) compositions, whereas Carlitz and locally Mullen compositions can be formulated as type~(ii) compositions. We use the multisection formula to translate the problem from integers to group elements, the transfer matrix method to do exact counting, and finally the Perron-Frobenius theorem to derive asymptotics. We also exhibit bijections involving certain restricted classes of compositions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1710.06797,
  title  = {Counting compositions over finite abelian groups},
  author = {Zhicheng Gao and Andrew MacFie and Qiang Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.06797},
  year   = {2017}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:18:21.956Z