English

Diagonal parity and loop toggling for symmetric matrices over $\mathbb F_2$

Combinatorics 2026-05-26 v2

Abstract

Let MM be a symmetric matrix over F2\mathbb F_2, and let \diag(M)\diag(M) be its diagonal vector. It is known that \diag(M)\Img(M). \diag(M)\in \Img(M). Thus the affine system Mx=\diag(M)Mx=\diag(M) is always solvable. We strengthen this existence statement to a parity rigidity theorem: every solution satisfies \diag(M)Tx\rank(M)(mod2). \diag(M)^T x\equiv \rank(M)\pmod 2 . For graph matrices this gives a common extension of Sutner's odd-domination theorem and Batal's parity theorem from closed-neighborhood matrices A(G)+IA(G)+I to arbitrary partially looped graph matrices A(G)+DA(G)+D. We also study how rank and nullity change when loops are toggled. Algebraically, simultaneous loop toggling on the support of a vector uu is the diagonal rank-one update MM+uuTM\mapsto M+uu^T. We prove an exact three-case rank and nullity formula for this update. Finally, for rooted trees with arbitrary binary diagonal labels, we give a finite-state boundary recursion using affine subspaces of F22\mathbb F_2^2. This recursion counts all generalized odd-domination patterns and implies eventual quasigeometric nullity formulas for complete rooted trees with eventually periodic depth labels.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.11056,
  title  = {Diagonal parity and loop toggling for symmetric matrices over $\mathbb F_2$},
  author = {Mohsen Aliabadi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.11056},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Some typos in the earlier version were fixed