Pairs of eventually constant maps and nilpotent pairs
Representation Theory
2025-12-04 v1 Combinatorics
Rings and Algebras
Abstract
Tom Leinster gave a bijective correspondence between the set of operators on a finite-dimensional vector space and the set of pairs consisting of a nilpotent operator and a vector in . Over a finite field this bijection implies that the probability that an operator be nilpotent is the reciprocal of the number of vectors in . We generalize this correspondence to pairs of operators between pairs of vector spaces and determine the probability that a random pair of operators be nilpotent. We also determine the set-theoretical counterpart of this construction and compute the number of eventually constant pairs of maps between two finite sets, closely related to the number of spanning trees in a complete bipartite graph.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.03367,
title = {Pairs of eventually constant maps and nilpotent pairs},
author = {Weixi Chen and Mee Seong Im and Mikhail Khovanov and Catherine Lillja and Nicolas Rugo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.03367},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
15 pages, 3 figures