English

The Laurent phenomenon

Combinatorics 2025-10-17 v1

Abstract

A composition of birational maps given by Laurent polynomials need not be given by Laurent polynomials; however, sometimes---quite unexpectedly---it does. We suggest a unified treatment of this phenomenon, which covers a large class of applications. In particular, we settle in the affirmative a conjecture of D..Gale and R..Robinson on integrality of generalized Somos sequences, and prove the Laurent property for several multidimensional recurrences, confirming conjectures by J..Propp, N..Elkies, and M..Kleber.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0104241,
  title  = {The Laurent phenomenon},
  author = {Sergey Fomin and Andrei Zelevinsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0104241},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

21 pages