English

Discrete Unique Continuation on Simplex

Mathematical Physics 2026-08-03 v1 Analysis of PDEs

Abstract

For integers N0N\ge0 and n2n\ge2, let ΔN(n)={αZ0n:α1++αn=N}. \Delta_N^{(n)} =\left\{\alpha\in\mathbb Z_{\ge 0}^n: \alpha_1+\cdots+\alpha_n=N\right\}. We formulate a discrete unique-continuation problem on this lattice simplex. Given an integer R1R\ge1, consider a function g:ΔnR(n)Rg:\Delta_{nR}^{(n)}\to\mathbb R satisfying the complete oriented-simplex relations i=1ng(β+ei)=0,βΔnR1(n), \sum_{i=1}^n g(\beta+e_i)=0, \qquad \beta\in\Delta_{nR-1}^{(n)}, where eie_i is the iith standard basis vector. We prove that a nonzero value at the balanced point forces the support-cardinality estimate with optimal growth exponent: if g(R,,R)0g(R,\ldots,R)\neq 0, then supp(g)cnRn/2|\operatorname{supp}(g)|\ge c_n R^{\lceil n/2\rceil}. Here cn>0c_n>0 depends only on nn. The key input is a \emph{Pascal uncertainty principle}. After factorial normalization, the simplex relations become a single directional differential equation. A nonzero balanced coefficient then produces a monomial whose relevant facet-chart exponents are all large, while the tensorized Pascal uncertainty principle prevents the coefficient supports in all partially shifted affine charts from being simultaneously sparse. Comparing those charts with two coordinate facets and summing over disjoint derivative shells gives the lower bound. Explicit constructions show that the exponent n/2\lceil n/2\rceil is optimal. The proof was obtained through human-guided discovery and exploration with the assistance of GPT-5.6 Sol.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2608.02707,
  title  = {Discrete Unique Continuation on Simplex},
  author = {Linjun Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.02707},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

17 pages