English

Counting racks of order n

Combinatorics 2017-06-28 v2 Group Theory

Abstract

A rack on [n][n] can be thought of as a set of maps (fx)x[n](f_x)_{x \in [n]}, where each fxf_x is a permutation of [n][n] such that f(x)fy=fy1fxfyf_{(x)f_y} = f_y^{-1}f_xf_y for all xx and yy. In 2013, Blackburn showed that the number of isomorphism classes of racks on [n][n] is at least 2(1/4o(1))n22^{(1/4 - o(1))n^2} and at most 2(c+o(1))n22^{(c + o(1))n^2}, where c1.557c \approx 1.557; in this paper we improve the upper bound to 2(1/4+o(1))n22^{(1/4 + o(1))n^2}, matching the lower bound. The proof involves considering racks as loopless, edge-coloured directed multigraphs on [n][n], where we have an edge of colour yy between xx and zz if and only if (x)fy=z(x)f_y = z, and applying various combinatorial tools.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1607.07036,
  title  = {Counting racks of order n},
  author = {Matthew Ashford and Oliver Riordan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.07036},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

Minor edits. 21 pages; 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-22T15:02:45.506Z