English

Root system chip-firing II: Central-firing

Combinatorics 2022-04-25 v3

Abstract

Jim Propp recently proposed a labeled version of chip-firing on a line and conjectured that this process is confluent from some initial configurations. This was proved by Hopkins-McConville-Propp. We reinterpret Propp's labeled chip-firing moves in terms of root systems: a "central-firing" move consists of replacing a weight λ\lambda by λ+α\lambda+\alpha for any positive root α\alpha that is orthogonal to λ\lambda. We show that central-firing is always confluent from any initial weight after modding out by the Weyl group, giving a generalization of unlabeled chip-firing on a line to other types. For simply-laced root systems we describe this unlabeled chip-firing as a number game on the Dynkin diagram. We also offer a conjectural classification of when central-firing is confluent from the origin or a fundamental weight.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1708.04849,
  title  = {Root system chip-firing II: Central-firing},
  author = {Pavel Galashin and Sam Hopkins and Thomas McConville and Alexander Postnikov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.04849},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

30 pages, 6 figures, 1 table; v2, v3: minor revisions

R2 v1 2026-06-22T21:15:59.382Z