English

The Sandpile Group of a Tree

Combinatorics 2010-10-08 v2

Abstract

A wired tree is a graph obtained from a tree by collapsing the leaves to a single vertex. We describe a pair of short exact sequences relating the sandpile group of a wired tree to the sandpile groups of its principal subtrees. In the case of a regular tree these sequences split, enabling us to compute the full decomposition of the sandpile group as a product of cyclic groups. This resolves in the affirmative a conjecture of E. Toumpakari concerning the ranks of the Sylow p-subgroups.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0703868,
  title  = {The Sandpile Group of a Tree},
  author = {Lionel Levine},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0703868},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

v2 incorporates referee comments, corrects references, improves notation

R2 v1 2026-07-22T17:53:25.755Z