English

On determinants of tournaments and $\mathcal{D}_k$

Combinatorics 2024-08-14 v1

Abstract

Let TT be a tournament with nn vertices v1,,vnv_1,\ldots,v_n. The skew-adjacency matrix of TT is the n×nn\times n zero-diagonal matrix ST=[sij]S_T = [s_{ij}] in which sij=sji=1s_{ij}=-s_{ji}=1 if vi v_i dominates vj v_j . We define the determinant det(T)\det(T) of T T as the determinant of ST S_T . It is well-known that det(T)=0\det(T)=0 if nn is odd and det(T)\det(T) is the square of an odd integer if nn is even. Let Dk\mathcal{D}_k be the set of tournaments whose all subtournaments have determinant at most k2 k^{2} , where kk is a positive odd integer. The necessary and sufficient condition for TD1T\in \mathcal{D}_1 or TD3T\in \mathcal{D}_3 has been characterized in 20232023. In this paper, we characterize the set D5\mathcal{D}_5, obtain some properties of Dk\mathcal{D}_k. Moreover, for any positive odd integer kk, we give a construction of a tournament TT satisfying that det(T)=k2\det(T)=k^2, and TDk\Dk2T\in \mathcal{D}_k\backslash\mathcal{D}_{k-2} if k3k\geq 3, which implies Dk\Dk2\mathcal{D}_k\backslash\mathcal{D}_{k-2} is not an empty set for k3k\geq 3.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.06992,
  title  = {On determinants of tournaments and $\mathcal{D}_k$},
  author = {Jing Zeng and Lihua You},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.06992},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

28 pages, 1 figure