English

On Universal Cycles for Multisets

Combinatorics 2024-02-27 v2

Abstract

A Universal Cycle for t-multisets of [n]={1,...,n} is a cyclic sequence of (n+t1t)\binom{n+t-1}{t} integers from [n] with the property that each t-multiset of [n] appears exactly once consecutively in the sequence. For such a sequence to exist it is necessary that n divides (n+t1t)\binom{n+t-1}{t}, and it is reasonable to conjecture that this condition is sufficient for large enough n in terms of t. We prove the conjecture completely for t in {2,3} and partially for t in {4,6}. These results also support a positive answer to a question of Knuth.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0701488,
  title  = {On Universal Cycles for Multisets},
  author = {Glenn Hurlbert and Tobias Johnson and Joshua Zahl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0701488},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

14 pages, two figures, will appear in Discrete Mathematics' special issue on de Bruijn Cycles, Gray Codes and their generalizations; paper revised according to journal referees' suggestions