English

Universal Cycles on 3-Multisets

Combinatorics 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

Consider the collection of all t-multisets of {1,...,n}. A universal cycle on multisets is a string of numbers, each of which is between 1 and n, such that if these numbers are considered in t-sized windows, every multiset in the collection is present in the string precisely once. The problem of finding necessary and sufficient conditions on n and t for the existence of universal cycles and similar combinatorial structures was first addressed by DeBruijn in 1946 (who considered t-tuples instead of t-multisets). The past 15 years has seen a resurgence of interest in this area, primarily due to Chung, Diaconis, and Graham's 1992 paper on the subject. For the case t=3, we determine necessary and sufficient conditions on n for the existence of universal cycles, and we examine how this technique can be generalized to other values of t.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0608769,
  title  = {Universal Cycles on 3-Multisets},
  author = {Tobias L. Johnson and Joshua Zahl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0608769},
  year   = {2007}
}

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6 pages