English

On power monoids and their automorphisms

Combinatorics 2024-11-11 v2 Number Theory Rings and Algebras

Abstract

Endowed with the binary operation of set addition, the family Pfin,0(N)\mathcal P_{{\rm fin},0}(\mathbb N) of all finite subsets of N\mathbb N containing 00 forms a monoid, with the singleton {0}\{0\} as its neutral element. We show that the only non-trivial automorphism of Pfin,0(N)\mathcal P_{{\rm fin},0}(\mathbb N) is the involution XmaxXXX \mapsto \max X - X. The proof leverages ideas from additive number theory and proceeds through an unconventional induction on what we call the boxing dimension of a finite set of integers, that is, the smallest number of (discrete) intervals whose union is the set itself.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2312.04439,
  title  = {On power monoids and their automorphisms},
  author = {Salvatore Tringali and Weihao Yan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.04439},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

11 pages, no figures. Fixed many typos and a couple of mistakes from the previous version. To appear in J Combinatorial Theory Ser A

R2 v1 2026-06-28T13:44:10.839Z