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The Muirhead-Rado inequality, 1 Vector majorization and the permutohedron

Combinatorics 2025-03-03 v3

Abstract

Let a\mathbf{a} and b\mathbf{b} be vectors in Rn\mathbf{R}^n with nonnegative coordinates. Permuting the coordinates, we can assume that a1ana_1 \geq \cdots \geq a_n and b1bnb_1 \geq \cdots \geq b_n. The vector a\mathbf{a} majorizes the vector b\mathbf{b}, denoted ba\mathbf{b} \preceq \mathbf{a}, if i=1nbi=i=1nai\sum_{i=1}^n b_i = \sum_{i=1}^n a_i and i=1kbii=1kai\sum_{i=1}^k b_i \leq \sum_{i=1}^k a_i for all k{1,,n1}k \in \{1,\ldots,n-1\}. This paper proves theorems of Hardy-Littlewood-P\'olya and Rado that ba\mathbf{b} \preceq \mathbf{a} if and only if Pa=bP\mathbf{a} = \mathbf{b} for some doubly stochastic matrix PP if and only if b\mathbf{b} is in the SnS_n-permutohedron generated by a\mathbf{a}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2109.01746,
  title  = {The Muirhead-Rado inequality, 1 Vector majorization and the permutohedron},
  author = {Melvyn B. Nathanson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.01746},
  year   = {2025}
}

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22 pages